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PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 


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PRESENTED BY 


The Estate of the 
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ITS METHODS AND RESULTS 


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A. EARL’YKERNAHAN, D.D. 


Foreword by 
BISHOP EDWIN H. HUGHES, D.D. LL. D., 
Methodist Episcopal Church 





New York CHICAGO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, McMxxv, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To My Wife, Susanna Elizabeth Kernahan, 
Who Has Inspired and Blessed Every Day of 
My Ministry Since the First Day That We 
Met, This Book Is Affectionately Dedicated. 


GOD’S COMMISSIONER 
(DEDICATED TO REV. A. E, KERNAHAN, DD.) 


From out the west, young oracle of God, 
He early came to range among the schools, 
With purpose deep,—not that of prating fools,— 
To temper heart, and win divining-rod ; 
To grasp the shepherd’s staff; to make a clod 
Grow verdant from the truth; and to the pools 
Of crystal life to lead the sheep he rules 
With gentle words,—the growing flock of God. 
Soon spoke the voice of Him who masters men :— 
“You have I chosen for a greater task,— 
Apostles to depute in your own right, 
‘To wake the glow of Pentecost again, 
Cold hearts to fire, for high desire to ask, 
And bear twin torches through the shadowy 
night.” 


CLARENCE M. Gauwup, D.D., 
Pastor of Central Baptist Church. 


63 Arlington Avenue, 
Providence, R. I. 


Foreword 


T is a sign of the hunger on the part of min- 
| isters and laymen for evangelistic knowledge 
and evangelistic inspiration, that books on the 
general subject have a ready welcome and a wide 
circulation. One could give the titles of many 
volumes that have appeared in the recent years 
dealing with the technique of this holy matter, 
while the volumes of men like Harold Begbie and 
others, recording the romances of evangelism in the 
re-making of actual souls, have found their way to 
laboratory libraries and to polite parlour tables. 
Some books on the subject, it must be confessed, 
were too academic to be much worth while. In- 
deed no book, whether it be the recital of the stories 
of evangelism or a discussion of its methods, can 
be effective if it be a cloistered production. Any 
persuasive and revealing treatise must always come 
out of actual life. Evangelists are not abstract. 
On the contrary, they are most vital. Edwards, 
Finney, Wesley, Moody,—these men were not 
shadowy figures, peeping out from an imagined 
world. They were rather rigourous “ humans.” 
5 


6 FOREWORD 


Indeed, Drummond said that Moody was the great- 
est “ human” that Drummond himself ever knew! 

And books on evangelism must be like these per- 
sonal figures of evangelism; they, too, must be 
fashioned in life. The writer recalls no work on 
the subject that has had wide and effective cur- 
rency, unless it came out of real travail with real 
souls by real messengers. ‘The theorist is not at 
home in this field. Amateurishness is most ama- 
teurish here; and the academician is most academic. 
Somehow, the man must go into the book, and the 
reader must be able to say, “ He, himself, did the 
work.” 

Here is another book on Evangelism; presenting 
a method so old and apostolic as to be new. It 
applies the way of the financial canvass to the 
higher commerce of the Kingdom. Surely the 
book will be like Christ in one respect if it send 
out the modern disciples, as He sent the ancient, 


3 


“two by two,” so that these disciples may return 
as apostles, with glowing faces and wondrous tales 
of spiritual conquest. 

Dr. Kernahan has not attempted any learned 
treatise. But he has given an evangelistic narra- 
tive, and out of the narrative the wise reader will 


extract the method himself. I have long been cer- 


FOREWORD 7 


tain that, if we are to be truly apostolic, we must 
return to the visitation plan. It does not contradict 
the method of mass evangelism. ‘That method 
faded because it was too long the sole dependence 
of some churches, and, also, because it met the com- 
petitions of growingly complex life. Yet Pentecost 


and Antioch are in the New Testament, and they 
will the more surely return to the modern Church, 


if this visitation plan be used with faithfulness. 
Therefore, I delight to put my name and word 
in the front of this book; and to have a wee part in 
sending it on to those eager searchers for the finer 
fashions and the higher moods of the evangel- 
istic Life. 
Epwin H. HucHes. 


Episcopal Residence, 
Chicago, Lil. 





Introduction 


FTER a most useful service as Chaplain of 
the First Division, A. FE. F., Mr. Kernahan 
came to Boston, where he was Pastor of 

one of the leading churches of his denomination. 
By his force, his learning, his attractive person- 
ality and his evident devout purpose he naturally 
took a position of real leadership in the whole com- 
munity. We are better because he lived and 
worked among us. My testimony may be preju- 
diced because I have come to regard him as a 
friend, but you will gain the same opinion from all 
those who know of his work in Boston or North- 
ampton, Mass., where he lived before entering the 
army. In my judgment he is an eloquent and 
convincing advocate of the fundamentals which we 
most need in America today. 


CHANNING H. Cox, 
Governor of the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts. 


Wan aM 
INO 
Nhe 


m 





Contents 


I 
THE NEW METHOD > 
I. Tur Evo,ution oF tHE MetuHop... 15 
II. Some UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS... 26 
Il. THe Nero of a New Metuop oF 
EVANGELISM hii Lie oe ee Sh lus se 36 
IV. Wuat Was Jesus’ MetuHop?...... 42 
II 
HOW TO ORGANIZE 
Wirt REBARATORY (WORK vim ihe 49 
VI. WHEN AND How ‘to LauncH....... 55 
Vil WORKERS CIREPORTS | Cou enn) eau fis 
VIII. Instruction OF THE WoORKERS..... 76 
IX. Continuous EVANGELISM ......... 84 
Til 
THE DISCOVERIES OF VISITATION 
EVANGELISM 
X. CONVERSION AND VISITATION EvAN- 
RET OM aan erire te crete Na bee se hel et ie cto une uae 93 
XI. THE REACTION ON THE WoRKERS... 96 


XII. Associations FormMEp DuriInc A 
VISITATION EVANGELISM CAMPAIGN 101 
XIII. WHat THE CHURCH Discovers.... 106 


11 


12 CONTENTS 


IV 
GOD’S GREATEST HUMAN RESOURCE 


XIV. Personauity Gop’s GREATEST RE- 
SOURCE IN CARRYING THE INVITA- 
RTC NE ese ae lohn erate a eke Lane a elie saan Eats 117 

XV. Some SuccEstions In TECHNIQUE... 119 

XVI. OBsERVATIONS WHILE WINNING TEN 
THOUSAND PEOPLE TO CHRISTIAN 


TDISCEPLIHSHI Presa ricteversuebcinue epeeks 124 
Wi 
THE EVANGELISM OF THE CHANGELESS 
CHRIST 


XVII. THe CHANGELESS CHRIST AND EvAN- 
CELISM 1 el eivarete oi lula Gtaewiersste wats 135 


I 
THE NEW METHOD 


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I 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 


HE, one sure proof of a man’s call to the 

ministry is his ability to win people to 

Christ. ‘This has been my supreme con- 
viction since the first thought of the ministry en- 
tered my mind; consequently, the constant passion 
of my life has been to succeed here. 

The background of my religious experience was 
set in the Middle West. The people of this section 
are particularly evangelistic. I commenced preach- 
ing before I was sixteen years of age, and very 
naturally threw myself with enthusiasm into the 
only method of evangelism that the people of this 
region knew anything about—namely, mass evan- 
gelism. It was my custom to hold one series of 
meetings in my own church and another in the 
church of some neighbouring pastor every year. 
There seemed to be no other way to attempt to win 
that portion of our church responsibility which we 
did not win by the regular church program of wor- 
ship and teaching. God gave us considerable suc- 
cess. ‘The Methodist Episcopal Church accepted 
this type of work without any question. 

In 1913, I went to New England. I carried with 


15 


16 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


me some carefully-thought-out conclusions about 
the mass method of evangelism. One was that we 
were spending altogether too much time at head-~ 
quarters. For instance: the last work that I was 
engaged in before leaving for New England was a 
series of four weeks of meetings. We kept as 
careful a record as possible of those who attended 
these meetings. I preached every evening, includ- 
ing Saturday, and three times on Sunday, each 
week. We found that ninety-six per cent. of the 
people who attended these meetings were already 
members of the church. You see, I had prepared a 
series of sermons for the purpose of winning those 
whom we did not win by regular church work to 
Christian discipleship. I had preached them to a 
crowd ninety-six per cent. of whom were already 
Christians. That was a waste of time. Another 
conclusion was, that those who attended the services 
were not using the spirituality that was generated 
in those services, for the purpose intended. It is. 
very clear that this new urge and zeal should be, 
used to persuade men and women to become Chris-j 
tians. As a matter of fact, most of the people who: 
were inspired by these meetings, hugged that spir-\ 
itual experience up to themselves and dismissed 
their whole thought of responsibility for others by 
saying, “ Wasn’t it a blessed meeting!” If they 
had taken this new power and applied it to the task 
of persuading others to become Christians, then the 
meeting would have been much more successful. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 17 


I found New England altogether different from 
the Middle West. It was different in its attitude 
toward religion in general. The people were less 
‘emotional. ‘They did not seem to have much re- 
spect for emotion itself. If the emotion accom- 
panied some big decision, well and good. If it 
was etnotion for emotion’s sake alone—then it 
was taboo. 

The Methodists of New England questioned 
seriously whether the mass method of evangelism 
was the only legitimate one. They had not thought 
out any other method, but they had become preju- 
diced against this one. Many of the churches had 
suffered painful disillusionments in their experi- 
ences with professional evangelists. I found, 
therefore, that it was necessary, if I were to have a 
series of meetings, first, to convert the members of 
my church to this method, and then to convert the 
people in the community. To do this at all success- 
fully, I must spend a very large amount of money 
in a publicity program. I justified the expenditure 
of this money by saying, “ Who can measure the 
worth of a soul? ” 

I continued to hold these meetings in New En- 
gland, not because I was satisfied with them, but 
because it was the only method with which people 
were acquainted. Now and then, I heard men 
speak of personal evangelism, but they meant one 
of two things: either that a few persons spoke 
to their friends in some meeting, or that the 


18 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


pastor spoke to individuals in the course of his 
parish work. 

After three years in New England I went to New 
York City for a year. This was just preceding the 
visit of Billy Sunday to New York. I had the 
pleasure of assisting in setting up the district 
ptayer-meetings which are always held preparatory 
to his work. We looked forward to his coming 
with high anticipation. I must confess that I was 
determined to make a close study of his method, so 
as to find out just what effect a campaign of this 
kind had upon the local churches. I found that the 
campaign was of tremendous inspirational value to 
the city in general, that it had a tendency to make 
people more militant in their Christian convictions ; 
but, these assertions are true only when they are 
regarded from an inspirational point of view. 

The effect of the campaign upon the churches 
was discouraging in many respects. The cards that 
were sent to the various pastors, in a large percent- 
age of cases, carried the names.of people who were 
already church members. Many of the cards 
which were not of this class were discouraging to 
the highest degree. People had become wrought 
upon emotionally. Certain psychological advan- 
tages had been taken. They had been won to the 
spell of a meeting instead of being won to a clear; 
intelligent acceptance of Jesus as their Saviour. A 
very small percentage of those reported as won 
actually joined the churches, and even many of 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 19 


these were very hard to care for. ‘They had been 
persuaded to make their decision in a very ab- 
normal situation. They were saying before long: 
“ Our pastor is not like Billy Sunday.” 

Probably no experience could have helped me 
more to come to the conclusion that was already 
forming in my mind, namely, that sensational 
evangelism has tremendous hazards, handicaps, and 
regrettable experiences. 

After a year in New York I went back near 
Boston, Mass. Billy Sunday held a campaign there 
also. I studied his work again and found exactly 
the same situation. The largest number of the 
cards carried the names of people who were 
already members of the Church; very few new 
men joined the Church; many of those who did, 
were very hard to train and establish in it. 

War was declared and I became a chaplain in 
the Army. I found that my work here had to be 
done almost entirely by personal contact. I noticed 
that the boys who were won to Christ by the per- 
sonal contact method were much firmer in their 
decisions. They had a tendency to remain faithful 
to their vows. The boys who raised their hands . 
or came forward in big mass meetings were, to an 
alarming extent, temporary in their loyalties and 
unfaithful in their vows. I had the rare privilege 
of talking to literally thousands of men individ- 
ually. They threw away their prejudices about 
religion and were open to a frank presentation 


20 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


when we talked to them personally. They were 
often indifferent and irresponsive when we talked 
to them in a group, but they told us their prob- 
lems, literally laid bare to us the most intimate 
secrets of their lives, when we sat by their sides 
or walked with them. Here we could deal with 
their one problem, or their several problems, in a 
definite, positive way—which obtained results. 

I came back to America with the conviction that 
if we could get any considerable number of men 
in our Church to enlist in this work, we would 
usher in a new epoch in the history of the Chris- 
tian body. 

I had been assigned to the pulpit of a church in 
Boston before I started home from Germany. I 
found myself situated in a beautiful, prosperous, 
residential section of the city. ‘The people were 
comfortable, contented, and conservative. In other 
words, I had been appointed to work in a com- 
munity which was quite likely to confirm my 
conclusions that mass evangelism did not reach 
many types of people. 

It was my pleasure a few months after assum- 
ing the duties of this pastorate, to preach for two 
weeks in Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, of 
Norwich, Conn. The Rev. W. H. Bath, District 
Superintendent of the Norwich District, New 
England Southern Conference, of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, requested me to attempt to 
“revive” the people. “ Just convince them that 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 21 


evangelism is still a live issue,” he said. ‘ Don’t 
try to hold the old-fashioned meetings. They will 
not respond. Make them know, make them feel 
that Jesus can save today as He has always saved 
men—but do not prejudice them by insisting on 
the old method.” 

I went to Trinity Church with the desire to win 
men by a type of educational evangelism. I ar- 
rived on a Monday night, and although there were 
six other churches combined with Trinity Church, 
we had the large number of seventeen at our first 
meeting! I was absolutely determined to get a 
crowd—and I did. The sexton thanked me for 
getting the seats in the gallery dusted off once 
more. Many of the members said on the first 
Sunday we had the largest crowds that had at- 
tended service since Bishop Quayle presided there, 
nine years before. 

The questions that arose in my mind, however, 
were these: “ Are we spending too much time just 
to get a crowd? Would it not be better to go to 
the homes and uncover the religious aspirations and 
hungers of the individual; question them about 
their local Christian responsibility; get them to 
decide to accept Jesus Christ and His program for 
them in that community, and in the world; and 
then invite them to church? They should then have 
something to go for.” 

When we came to the conclusion of these meet- 
ings, I sat down and analysed the results carefully. 


22 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


I had been the preacher—I could violently criticise, 
and nobody could object. I came to several con- 
clusions. The first one was that we had made no 
real impression on the life of that portion of our 
constituency for which the meeting was held; that 
we had won no whole families to the Christian 
program of living. Just now and then one out of 
a family had been won. Another conclusion was 
that if you were to visit Trinity Church six months 
from that date, it would be difficult to discover any 
difference in the spiritual life of the people in the 
church. Another conclusion was that the old 
members of the church were not prepared to as- 
similate these newcomers into the body and spirit 
of the Christian Kingdom. 

I went back to my own pulpit in Boston, held a 
series of meetings for my own people. At the 
conclusion of this special endeavour, I said: “I 
will never hold another series of evangelistic 
services for the specific purpose of winning people 
to a public decision for Christ. I will, now and 
then, hold a series of meetings for inspirational, 
educational, and cultural purposes; but not for the 
purpose of converting men to Christian disciple- 
ship.” I had always been practical in my ministry. 
I did not believe in discarding one method without 
having some other method to substitute for it. 
The situation was becoming serious. I was abso- 
lutely determined to find some way to accomplish 
this work satisfactorily. It occurred to me that it 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 23 


would be wise to try and discover just how Jesus 
did this work. I found clearly, to my delight, that 
Jesus won every outstanding follower by the per- 
sonal contact method. (A full exposition of this 
fact in the fourth chapter of this book.) I also 
found that the immediate followers of Jesus car- 
ried on their work in evangelism by personal inter- 
views. ‘There is the record that St. Peter preached 
and thousands were won; but if you will read that 
record carefully, you will find that the other fol- 
lowers, while he was preaching, were running here 
and there and everywhere, inviting men and women 
to become followers of Jesus. You will remember 
Jesus sent the Seventy, two by two, to carry on this 
work. They came back so hilariously happy that 
they said: “Even the evil spirits are subject 
unto us.” 
After I had found that Jesus did the work thus, 
and that His immediate disciples did the work 
thus, I turned my attention to the early history of 
the Church and I found that here, again, there was 
unmistakable evidence that during the phenomenal 
growth of the Church in those early years, the 
work was done by religious conversations in which 
‘one Christian talked to another, or, at the most, to 
a few. The laws of the day made it impossible to 
hold mass meetings, and yet, during this very 
period, one of the striking miracles in the history 
:of the Christian church occurred; namely, the 
conversion of the Roman Empire. 


24 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


I was now convinced that it was time to experi- 
ment. I could tell the laymen that Jesus won His 
followers by personal interview, that His immedi- 
ate disciples found romance and achieved success 
in this kind of work, that the members of the 
Early Church extended the borders of the church 
and accordingly converted the Roman Empire 
through quiet, persistent, passionate, religious con- 
versation. I would ask them: “Is there any 
reason why the early followers of Jesus could do 
this, and not we? Did they have any authority 
that we do not have? Could they anticipate suc- 
cess any more than we can?” I was quite sure that 
Jesus’ disciples of today could do anything that the 
early disciples did. I was of the opinion that we 
had just as much authority as Peter, or John, or 
Matthew, or Nathanael. I was persuaded that we 
had a far greater promise of success than they had. 
We had not been preaching and teaching for nine- 
teen hundred years without building up a certain 
religious background. We could appeal to society 
on these grounds with every reason to believe that 
we would get a response that the early disciples 
could not have expected to get. 

Just at this time I met a man by the name of 
Guy H. Black. He had been experimenting in 
exactly the same field. We had come to exactly 
the same conclusions. We worked together in the 
city of Chicago for several weeks. Our results 
were a revelation to the Christians there. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 25 


I resigned from my pastorate and consecrated 
my life to the purpose of demonstrating what lay- 
men can do towards winning the fifty million or 
more people in our country who are now outside 
of the Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant 
Churches to friendship with Jesus Christ and mem- 
bership in some body of His followers. 


I] 
SOME, UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 


T is safe to assume that Jesus’ Name is not 
strange. It is very difficult to find a man any- 
where who does not know perfectly well what 

you mean when you ask him to become a Christian. 
I am not talking about a perfect understanding of 
all the individual and social responsibilities that 
one has as a follower of Christ—I am speaking 
about the first step in the Christian life. We as- 
sume, therefore, in this work, that men and women, 
everywhere, have been in such relationship to 
Christian preaching and teaching that they under- 
stand the invitation when it is given to them. We 
assume also that members of every denomination 
under the shining sun are talking about some type 
of Christian experience which is absolutely valid; 
that we do not, therefore, expect all to have the 
same experience; that it is our duty and privilege 
to get them to look upon Christ and have their own 
experience. We must consequently respect the 
other person’s religious background. 

In South Manchester, Conn., one of the first 
teams of two to go out to do this work was made 
up of an English woman and a German woman. 


26 


SOME UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 27 


The first call they made was in a German home. 
The. people in this family had had their religious 
experience and training in the German Lutheran 
Church, but had ceased all relationship therewith. 
The children had been attending the Sunday school 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This team 
was calling from that church. The workers had 
heard me, when giving instructions, emphatically 
request that they respect the other person’s religious 
background. After they had been visiting a few 
moments, the German mother said: “I am wor- 
ried about my children. They are old enough to 
be in classes leading to confirmation. I do not, 
however, wish to send them to the Lutheran 
Church here; the services are all held in the 
German language. I do not want my children 
to attend a church where the services are all in 
German.” 

The German worker said to this mother : “ Why 
not send them over to our church and have them 
confirmed ? ”’ 

She answered: “Oh! you do not confirm in 
your church.” 

“Yes, we do,” the German worker replied. 
“We do not call it confirmation, but it is the same 
thing. We baptise children, if they have not been 
baptised before; we have them come to the altar 
and consecrate their lives to Jesus and His work 
in the world; we put them into instruction 
classes.”’ 


28 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


The German mother then said: ‘‘O, dats so 
goot—you may have my children.” 

This team of workers remembered that I had 
said never to take the promise of a second party, 
but always to see him themselves. So the worker 
said to the mother: “ But, don’t you think we 
should see the children?” 

“O, no,” she replied, “ you may have my chil- 
dren ”’—and, as the workers were leaving the door, 
the mother continued: “If you don’t mind, father 
and I would like to come over and join your 
church also.” 

Do you see what had happened? These workers 
had discovered a family that used to be in close 
relationship with a church, but that had severed 
the relationship and was not getting the Christian 
nurture that every family needs. ‘The visitors had 
entered appreciatively into the religious background 
of this family; they had even used the religious 
vocabulary with which this German mother was 
acquainted. They had re-established their relation- 
ship with the Christian Church. Only God in 
Heaven knows what that will mean to posterity! 

Another assumption that we make is that people 
are basically, universally, instinctively religious. 
It is very helpful when one is attempting to get a 
layman to do this work to call his attention to this 
fact. Oftentimes merf say: “I could not do that— 
that is not in my line”’; and really what they have 
in their mind is that it would be abrupt and out of 


SOME UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 29 


place to go into a man’s home or his private office 
and introduce a subject of conversation which is 
absolutely foreign to the man’s mind. The thing 
that they are overlooking is that all men are inter- 
ested in religion. It is the chief interest in life. 
There are men who talk loudly upon the street and 
would lead you to believe that they have no respect 
for the Church and no confidence in its religious 
program for the world. These same men, when 
you get them in their own homes and ask them 
some direct questions about their own personal 
religious responsibility in the community, com- 
mence to reveal aspirations and hunger that you 
never dreamed were in their minds and hearts. 

One day in Burlington, Vermont—in the midst 
of a wonderful single church campaign where we 
won three hundred and nine individuals to a Chris- 
tian decision in five days—we met a man. He was 
the owner of a theatre. After we had announced 
the purpose of our visit and had been talking for 
a few moments, he asked: “Have you seen 
MrrAstk 

“No,” I said. ‘ Who is Mr. A.?” 

“He is a friend of mine—a merchant,” he 
Teplied. 

“ Well,” I said, “ we will be glad to see Mr. A. 
But just now we are interested in talking to you 
about the Christian life and about your local re- 
ligious responsibility.” 

“Go and see Mr. A., and if you get any- 


30 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


where with him, come back and see me,’ he 
returned. 

L saw that it would be best to do as he suggested, 
although I was quite sure that it was his strategy 
to send us to a man whom he thought it was impos- 
sible for us to win. After we left his place of busi- 
ness, I said to Dr. Mark Kelly, pastor of the church 
in Burlington: “ Who is Mr. A.?” | 

“Oh,” he answered, “he is a ‘hard nut.’ Now, 
do not misunderstand me. He is highly respected 
in the community and a good man; but it would be 
absolutely useless to talk to him about making a 
definite Christian decision.” 

“ Well,” I said, “ let us see him.” 

“T think it will be a waste of time,” he replied. 

‘We have been working pretty hard,” I an- 
swered. “ Let’s take a vacation and go down and 
see him.” | 

When we arrived at the store, the clerk at the 
counter told us Mr. A. was in the private 
room. We asked if we might go back there 
and see him, and were told we might. As we 
entered the room, I said: “You're Mr. A., I 
understand. You know Dr. Kelly, of course; he 
is the pastor of the church up here. My name is 
Kernahan. We have come to you to talk about the 
Christian life, about church membership, and about 
your religious responsibility in your community. 
We would like to visit with you about what it 
would mean if you would invest your personality 


SOME UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 31 


in the church here. Of course, you know, Mr. 
A., that the Christian Church is like every other 
human institution; speaking from the human 
standpoint, it is the combined strength of the per- 
sonalities that are invested in it. You, undoubt- 
edly, want a Christian environment in which to 
live; you wouldn’t live where there were no public 
schools.” 

“No,” he replied. 

“Well,” I continued, “the public school is the 
product of the Christian Church. You wouldn’t 
live where there was no system of jurisprudence.” 

Again he replied, “ No.” 

“Well,” I continued, “many of the protective 
features of our system of jurisprudence, as we 
have it now, have been fostered and nurtured in the 
heart of the Christian Church. You would not live 
in a community where there was no place for the 
religious education of the children.” 

Again our friend answered in the negative. 

“The Church is the only institution that fur- 
nishes that type of education,” I went on. I had 
already discovered that the general assumption of 
the community that Mr. A. was not interested in 
religion, was false. 

I then asked him a number of direct questions. 
“Do you receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour, 
and confess Him as your Lord and Master?” I 
asked him. 

“Why,” he said, pointing to an emblem on the 


32 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


lapel of his coat, “ Mr. Kernahan, I could not be 
a member of this organization if I did not be- 
lieve that.” 

“T rather thought that you believed it,” I said. 
“But I wondered just how personal your belief 
was. Have you just believed in a rather general 
way that Jesus Christ is your Saviour? Have you 
just, in a general way, confessed Him as your 
Lord and Master? If that be true, Mr. A, I 
am here, today, to appeal to you that you crystal- 
lize those general beliefs into a personal attitude 
and decision. Do you accept and profess the 
Christian faith as contained in the New Testament 
of our Lord Jesus Christ?” 

“Why, yes. ‘That’s prerequisite to membership 
in the organization represented by this emblem.” 

‘Yes, I know it is,” I said, “because I, too, 
belong to that fraternity. But, the question is— 
just how personal have you made this profession 
of belief in the Christian faith? Do you believe 
that Jesus was right when He taught that God was 
a loving, Heavenly Father? Do you believe that 
Jesus was correct when He said that we live for- 
ever? Are you persuaded that Jesus was right 
when He taught that a human life is the most valu- 
able thing in the world? You will remember that 
is told us in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke’s 
Gospel, in the story told of the shepherd who left 
the ninety-and-nine in the pasture and went out to 
look for the one that was lost.’ 


SOME UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 383 


Mr. A.’s attitude, as I discovered after I had 
questioned him upon these two matters, indicated 
that he had no question as to the legitimacy 
of this appeal. Then I said, “ My friend, if you 
actually believe these things, I am sure that you 
will agree with me that it is necessary to have a 
church. You cannot perpetuate or promote any- 
thing unless it is organised. Now that’s just 
where the local church comes in. If you are 
willing in a definite, positive manner to receive 
Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and to receive the 
Christian faith as taught in the New Testament, 
then it is your inevitable responsibility that you 
invest your personality in a church.” 

“T will think it over,’ was his answer. 

Now, nine times out of every ten, when a man 
says he will “think it over,” he is just dodging the 
issue. In as large a percentage of cases as I have 
here mentioned, he has been thinking it over more 
or less all his life. This is the biggest obstacle we 
meet in our work—not merely a spiritual laziness, 
but a psychological difficulty which gets in the way 
of an immediate decision. We do not need to 
persuade people that the Christian teachings are 
true,—ninety-five per cent. of them believe that— 
half as much as we need to persuade them to act 
on the thing that they already believe. 

“All right, Mr. A.,”’ I replied, “if you want 
to think it over, let’s think it over together right 
now. Have you any problems, have you any 


34 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


unbelief, have you any sinful practices? Is there 
any obstacle in the way?” I discovered by these 
questions, and others of like nature, that this man’s 
difficulty was procrastination. So I said to him, 
“Mr. A., today is the day to make your de- 
cision!’ ‘This man who had been spoken of as 
a “hard nut,’ insofar as a religious appeal was 
concerned, commenced to show a good deal of 
emotion and I saw that my opportunity had come. 
“Mr. A.,” I said, “if I could promise you that 
if you were to make your decision today, we 
could win at least six other men in Burlington 
before the close of our work this week, would that 
be any consideration to you?” 

He turned toward me, reached out his hand. and 
said, “If you could assure me, Mr. Kernahan, that 
my decision for Christ would win one person in | 
Burlington to a like decision, I would make it this 
moment.”’ 

“Mr. A.,” I replied, “I am safe in assur- 
ing you that if you will make your decision today, 
we will win at least one other man, and possibly 
several,” 

“Tl do it, then,” he said. He signed his name 
upon our “ Record of Decision” card. We shook 
hands, had a word of prayer, and once more it was 
demonstrated that man everywhere is basically, 
instinctively religious. 

We could multiply this illustration by hundreds. 
It is scarcely necessary. When we go with the 


SOME UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS 35 


realisation that folks are thanking God that we 
came, that we feed an immense hunger, that we 
uncover and develop deep and sacred aspirations 
—then we can go out with a conviction and come 
back with tremendous results. 


Til 


THE NEED OF A NEW METHOD OF 
EVANGELISM 


HERE is a great need of a new method of 
evangelism in which the laymen can play a 
larger part. ‘The method that I suggest is 

new to us, but not to Jesus. We have always 
talked about it—-we have never tried it. It must 
be based upon a passionate fondness for mankind 
and a holy love for Jesus. We must set this method 
up at the foot of the Cross, for that is the only 
place where sufficient dynamic can be received to 
enable us to succeed. “ At the foot of the Cross,” 
says Sir Oliver Lodge, “there has been a perennial 
experience of relief and renovation. Ours is not a 
creed, it is a passion. Men in every age have died 
for it. In every land where its tale is told and 
with every new sun that dawns, drunkards may be 
found whom it has made sober, thieves whom it 
has taught to be honest, harlots whom it has lifted 
up to chastity, selfish men who, touched by its 
preaching, live by a great law of self-sacrifice. It 
is the root whence blossom great heroisms and 
charities. All human sorrows hide in His wounds. 
All human self-denials lean on His Cross.” 


36 


THE NEED OF A NEW METHOD 37 


It is here that every sincere layman, as well as 
ordained minister, may receive such a passionate 
fondness for people and such an appreciation of 
Jesus’ spiritual power that he can become as 
powerful as any immediate disciple of Jesus ever 
was. Jesus said, “ He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father.” Dr. Charles L. Goodell says, ‘“‘ In His 
own person He brought a spiritual power and 
dynamic which broke up the old order of the pagan 
world and founded a system based upon an un- 
calculating and overwhelming love. He mastered 
men and events, and broke into the leaden night 
with a blazing passion that was volcanic and irre- 
ristible. He broke up the order of His time to the 
breaking of His own heart.” And Forsythe says, 
“He was an austere man, a severe critic, a born 
fighter, of choleric wrath and fiery scorn, so that 
the people thought He was Elijah or the Baptist. 
Yet He was gentle to the last degree, especially to 
those ignorant and out of the way. Clear, calm, 
determined and sure of His mark, He was the next 
hour roused to such impulsive passion as if He 
were beside Himself. But if He let Himself go, 
He always knew where He was going. He poured 
out His soul unto God and unto death and He was 
the friend of publicans and sinners.” 

If we found our new method at the foot of the 
Cross, these two indispensable possessions will be 
ours, namely, a passionate fondness for mankind, 
and a graphic appreciation of Jesus’ spiritual power. 


38 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


When we realise that Jesus said that we could do 
greater things than these—referring to some things 
that He and His immediate disciples had done— 
then we are fired with an enthusiasm to try. As 
we look out into the world, we understand better, 
as our experience broadens, just what Jesus meant. 
He meant that the world would be better prepared 
in our day than in His to respond to the teaching 
and preaching of good men who looked, and lived, 
and worked, and loved like Jesus. There is now a 
spiritual content in the world that did not exist 
when He walked upon the earth. His spirit has 
energised every race of people on earth. His name 
is not strange! Where once there was violent 
antagonism to His leadership, there is now admira- 
tion. Where once there was misunderstanding, 
there is now a partial recognition of His Saviour- 
hood. Where once there was gross ignorance as to 
His spiritual ability and transcending qualities in 
general, there is now an increasing and ever ex- 
panding spiritual literacy. 

This new method must grow up within a congre- 
gation. It must not be imported. Responsibility 
can not be shifted. We have had far too many 
spiritual tragedies where congregations have at- 
tempted to place the entire responsibility for the 
saving of their constituency upon the heart of their 
pastor or upon some one else brought in from the 
outside. Jesus can not fully nurture those who 
are converted, unless the people into whose con- 


THE NEED OF A NEW METHOD 39 


gregation these individuals come, know something 
of the spiritual travail through which they came. 

Now, as to the method. We are safe to follow 
Jesus here. He sent His disciples out two by two 
to visit, to do deeds of love, and to deliver mes- 
sages of spiritual promise. Think of the Seventy, 
for instance. These men obeyed Jesus. They went 
out willing to use their lips to speak His message, 
and their hands to do His work of love. They . 
came back so hilariously happy because of the 
things they had seen accomplished that they said, 
“ Fiven the evil spirits are subject unto us.” We 
have every right to conclude that we are sent just 
as these early disciples were. We have the same 
authority, we have the same commission. We will 
have greater success. The harvest is ripe. 

The difference between this method and the 
method of mass evangelism lies in the fact that 
the laymen become the evangelists together with 
the pastors. The old method was liable to be the 
appeal of one man. Jesus could not possibly make 
a complete evangelistic appeal to a whole commun- 
ity through one man. 

There is a difference in personality. Some are 
compatible, some are incompatible. ‘There is a 
difference of experience and education in any com- 
munity. We must be prepared for all types of 
personality, all degrees of experience and educa- 
tion, if we are to make a comprehensive evangelistic 
appeal to the unsaved portion of our constituency. 


40 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Too often the professional evangelist brought in to 
lead a campaign of mass evangelism, is reactionary 
in his theological outlook. Oftentimes he is eccen- 
tric, and his eccentricities are exaggerated for pub- 
licity purposes. Oftentimes he is a past master in 
the creating and directing of a dangerous mob 
psychology. Often the people who are won by 
this method are won to a certain theological inter- 
pretation of the Bible, which is mechanical and out 
of date. When the evangelist leaves, these people 
become discouraged and fall away. Every pastor 
knows that there is great danger of a bad after- 
math when this method is used. 

Another method is needed, not only actually to 
have a comprehensive evangelistic appeal, but in 
order to answer the greatest hunger of our laymen. 
Since the first time that a layman came to a definite 
realisation of his immediate relationship to Jesus 
and the Father, he has wanted to win others to this 
same consecrated relationship. Give him the op- 
portunity, furnish him the instructions, place in his 
hands the names of friends and neighbours to 
whom to go, tell him that Jesus goes with him, and 
do this all at the foot of the Cross, and straightway 
he will come back with the wonderful story that 
five, ten, fifteen people have made their decision for 
Christ at his solicitation. 

I do not wish to be unduly critical, but the very 
logic of our present situation drives us, if we are 
to be practical, to this new method. I have fol- 


THE NEED OF A NEW METHOD Al 


lowed carefully the work of evangelists, who once 
were successful, for the last four years, and it is 
very evident that mass evangelism has largely 
served its day in many sections of the country. 
Let us accept without reservation the fact that hun- 
dreds of members in a church will do far more 
towards evangelism in any community by going 
out in teams of two and visiting in the most cour- 
teous, direct, and persuasive manner with their 
friends and neighbours about the claims of Christ 
upon life and the demands of present day Christian 
citizenship, than any one man can possibly do by 
attempting to get decisions for Christ in a public 
service. 


IV 
WHAT WAS JESUS’ METHOD? 


PERSON is supremely fortunate when he 
discovers Jesus’ way of doing anything. 
This is especially true in the field of evan- 
gelism. Our immediate concern here is, how did 
Jesus try to win His followers? One does not 
read very long in the New Testament before he 
comes to the conclusion that Jesus never held a 
series of meetings for the purpose of winning His 
followers. He preached, and no man will ever 
preach like Jesus did, but when it came to the defi- 
nite task of winning His followers, He went to 
them or called them to Him. He talked with them 
on the road, when He walked, or while He rested 
at the well, or in some other homely place. You 
will remember that when Jesus was baptised, the 
man who baptised him said, “ Behold the Lamb of 
God.” ‘There were some people who overheard 
this announcement, and one man by the name of 
Andrew came to Jesus. Jesus had an interview 
with Andrew and immediately, in the most natural 
way in the world, Andrew became a disciple of 
Jesus. 
There is something so simple, so beautiful about 
42 


WHAT WAS JESUS’ METHOD? 43 


Jesus’ contact. Andrew was at once filled with a 
passion to win others. He could think of no one 
on earth that he would rather bring to Jesus than 
his own brother, so he went at once to his tempes- 
tuous brother Peter and brought him to Jesus. 
Jesus did not ask a number of dogmatic questions. 
He interpreted Peter to himself, and during that 
conversation, Peter, one of the most interesting 
characters of the New ‘Testament, was won to 
Christian discipleship. 

Jesus was out walking one day and He saw a 
man. He called to him, “ Follow Me,” and a man 
by the name of Philip came at once to Jesus’ side. 
He had not been long in contact with the spirit of 
Jesus when he, like Andrew, said to himself, 
“Now, whom can I bring to Christ?” He thought 
how wonderful it would be for his brother Nathan- 
ael to become acquainted with Jesus, so he pro- 
ceeded at once to get his brother. There is just a 
little interesting side light here on human nature. 
When he met Nathanael he told him about Jesus 
and told him whence He came; and Nathanael re- 
vealed one of the age-long human tendencies when 
he said, “ Why, how could it be that a man such 
as you say Jesus is could come from the place He 
did?” However, Philip was so sure that he had 
met one who had spiritual dynamic enough to make 
life triumphant that he persisted in his entreaty, 
and Nathanael consented to meet Jesus. Jesus saw 
him coming and the story that is told of their 


Ad VISITATION EVANGELISM 


introduction is exceedingly interesting. Jesus told 
him that he was without guile. Nathanael im- 
mediately accepted Jesus’ spiritual dictatorship, and 
became His obedient friend and loving servant. 

I like to think of another man whom Jesus in- 
terviewed, who had the same handicap that I have 
—whenever he wanted to see anything, he had to 
stand up on something. He came hurrying down 
to see Jesus. The people were all tiptoeing to look 
upon the beautiful face of the Master and to hear 
His musical voice, and to be thrilled with His 
message of love. ‘This man was all puffed up with 
dignity because he had been elected to a position 
of public trust. He forgot all about his dignity 
and tried to look over the folks into the face of 
Jesus, but found that it was impossible; so he ran 
down the road ahead of Jesus, climbed up into a 
sycamore tree, and looked down to see Jesus as He 
passed. Now notice how natural our Divine Ex- 
ample was here. He looked up into the face of 
Zaccheus and said, “Come down, Zaccheus, | 
want to go home and dine with you.” On their 
way home, Jesus talked to him about the program 
of the Kingdom of God. 

_Zacchetus was so thrilled and charmed by the 
altruistic purpose of the heart of Christ that he 
said, “ I'll tell you what I’ll do, Jesus, I'll give fifty 
per cent. of all the goods I possess to works of 
charity.” ‘This is a good proof of conversion. I 
have known some folks who lived in the Church 


WHAT WAS JESUS’ METHOD? 45 


all of their lives and you could not convince them, 
to save your soul, that they should give ten per 
cent. to Christian work. 

Jesus seemed to anticipate the fact that people 
would be rather hesitant to adopt His method of 
evangelism, and the history of the Christian Church 
proves that His anticipation was correct. One of 
the reactions that one meets in this work is the 
growing astonishment that comes as one notes the 
phenomenal success that many sincere laymen have 
in this work, when one remembers that for over 
nineteen hundred years we have almost entirely 
forsaken Jesus’ method of evangelism. 

As though He were to say one more final and 
emphatic word upon this subject, He has a con- 
versation one day with a woman at a well. He is 
sitting upon the well platform and a woman comes 
to draw water. He engages her in conversation 
and, using the figure of the water as a symbol of 
spiritual life, He speaks of “ Living Water.” He 
tells her all about her past life. She admits that 
His story is true. She marvels at His courtesy and 
sympathy. He turns her attention from the past 
to the future. She grasps the opportunity of re- 
demption. She hurries at once back to the village 
and persuades her friends and neighbours, who 
knew all about her bad past, to come and meet her 
Saviour. This story proves beyond any doubt that 
any person who is sincere can do this work. All 
that a person needs is a capacity for friendship and 


46 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


an acquaintanceship with Christ to be able to visit 
with others in a winning manner about Jesus’ 
personality and Saviourhood. 

Send-a number of laymen, two by two, out into 
any community to visit about Jesus with the people 
for whom your church is responsible, and there will 
be others like Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, 
Zacchzeus and the Woman at the Well, who will 
accept the invitation to meet Jesus. When once 
they have met Jesus, it will be the most simple and 
natural thing in the world for them to confess their 
faith in Him at some church altar, and to be re- 
ceived as members of the group of modern dis- 
ciples. This was Jesus’ method—it should be ours. 
We must learn to capitalise the spiritual and psy- 
chological elements, just as a good salesman does, 
but for the purpose of the presentation of the 
Christian religion. 


il 


HOW TO ORGANIZE 





V 
PREPARATORY WORK 


ORK in the field of evangelism has suf- 
fered for lack of careful organisation. 
Sometimes we have emphasised the abso- 

lute necessity of the presence of the Holy Spirit in 
an enterprise of this kind, with an inference that 
the Holy Spirit would not work in an organised 
and systematic way. Some churches have given 
the impression that they thought the Holy Spirit 
was not interested in the work of evangelism at 
any other time than in the winter. I have heard 
people say, “ We will wait until the meetings next 
winter.” I have heard pastors say, “‘ I am antici- 
pating that Mr. A. will make his decision when the 
meetings come on.” If I understand the Holy 
Spirit, my idea is that He would instruct us that 
every week in the year is acceptable to Him; that 
He comes whenever people receive Him. Let us 
always remember that the Holy Spirit has seemed 
to be present with greater power at certain seasons 
than at others, simply because we prepared our- 
selves better these times to receive Him. 

This fact points to the necessity of preparatory 
-work. We must prepare ourselves, not only in 


49 


50 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


spiritual fervour, but also in a carefully outlined 
program of procedure. The first part of the pre- 
paratory work is very important. John Stuart 
Blackie says: “The Early Church worked by a 
fervid moral contagion, not by the suasion of cool 
argument. ‘The Christian method of conversion, 
not by logical arguments, but by moral contagion 
and the effusion of the Holy Ghost, has with the 
masses of mankind always proved itself the most 
effective.’ We should prepare ourselves by prayer 
and by the reading of spiritual conquest, both in 
the Bible and in books which record great spiritual 
achievements. We must irradiate religious earnest- 
ness and contagious enthusiasm. This type of 
spiritual mood becomes the dynamic in our work. 
We must, however, be so well organised that the 
spiritual energy that we exert will be directed to 
the proper places of need, or we will expend 
our physical strength and spiritual suasion to 
little effect. Therefore, we make the following 
suggestions : 

1. The pastor should set apart one week for in- 
tensive work. He should have all-the-year-around 
evangelism—and he can have it; but he must first 
have a demonstration of what Christ can do 
through a number of laymen in this method. 
Therefore, he should have a date marked on his 
church calendar for a one week Intensive Visitation 
Evangelistic Campaign. 

2. The pastor should make a very careful Re- 


PREPARATORY WORK 51 


sponsibility Roll. ‘This list should carry the names 
of every man, woman, boy, and girl in the com- 
munity for whose religious nurture his church is 
responsible. This list should be complete; no one 
should be missed. ‘Then these names should be 
transcribed upon a Prospect Card, giving the 
nature of the person’s relations to the church, and 
any other information that will assist those who 
call upon him.” 

3. The pastor should secure just as large a num- 
ber of laymen as he possibly can to do the calling. 
The best way to enroll them as workers is to go to 
them privately and get their signatures upon a 
Visitation Committee Agreement Card. He can 
enlist a great many people in this work by assuring 
them that wherever the laymen have attempted to 
do this service, they have had phenomenal success ; 
that, for instance, one director in campaigns that 
resulted in the winning of over ten thousand people 
found, when the results were averaged, that each 
team of two laymen had won fourteen new people; 
that he, the pastor, understands that they feel as if 
they cannot do it, but if they will only try, he will 
release them if they should find they are not suc- 
ceeding. The pastor will never have to release a 
person. | 

These workers should designate exactly the 
amount of time that they will give. We find that 
it is much better to get them to promise to work 
during all the periods set aside in one week, than 


52 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


to allow them to spread their periods of work over 

a longer length of time. Have them sign for Sun- 
day afternoon, and every evening of the week with 
the exception of Saturday. 

4. The pastor should make arrangements for a 
workers’ supper at 6:00 or 6: 15 every evening of 
the “intensive.” This supper is very essential. 
You will find that the workers will be much more — 
regular and punctual when a supper is served 
than they would be if they had to get their sup- 
per at home first. A great many interruptions are 
avoided. ‘Then there is virtue in the fact that 
when the workers eat together, they have the op- 
portunity to talk about the work. We will say, 
for instance, that two men are sitting side by side 
at the table. Mr. A. failed last night to win any- 
body. Mr. B. won four. Mr. B. is so enthusiastic 
about his success that he becomes a veritable foun- 
tain of inspiration for Mr. A. Mr. A. goes out 
from the supper with a great deal more courage 
than he would have had if he had eaten at home 
and thought about last night’s failure. The Pros- 
pect Cards which were used the night before are 
turned in while the people are eating. ‘The new 
assignments for that evening’s work are made the 
moment the supper is finished. Several of the 
workers give their reports. They tell of their ex- 
periences, and of the problems that they have met. 
The director seizes this opportunity to emphasise 
the instructions that are needed to meet the situ- 


PREPARATORY WORK 538 


ations that are revealed. Immediately at the close 
of his address, which must be condensed and liter- 
ally saturated with inspiration, the group engages 
in prayer, and at the conclusion of the prayer, they 
go to work at once. 

5. The pastor should ask all those whom he 
secures as workers to give special time in prayer 
in preparation for this enterprise. It is best to ask 
them privately. He should ask any wife whose 
husband is on the prospect list, and also any hus- 
band whose wife is on the prospect list, and like- 
wise any member of the family who is interested 
in any other member of the family becoming a 
Christian, to pray for that person. He should 
warn them, however, not to speak to that person 
about the matter until the name is assigned unless 
they are impressed with the fact that the Holy 
Spirit leads them to do so. 

6. The pastor should prepare two classes of in- 
struction for church membership. ‘This schedule 
of work should be carefully outlined, the teacher 
secured, and everything made ready to place these 
new members in classes the minute that they make 
their confession of Christ at the altar. The way in 
which these people are received into the church is 
entirely in the hands of the pastor—the director 
has nothing to say about that. He suggests, how- 
ever, that the young people be given a thorough 
course of training in what it means to be a Chris- 
tian citizen today; what it means to be a member 


54: VISITATION EVANGELISM 


of any Christian church. He suggests that the 
older ones, who have not had a Sunday School and 
church background, either be given instruction in 
a class that meets at a regularly appointed time, or 
be given an outline for reading. I would have a 
series of religious educational and cultural ad- 
dresses a few weeks after the “ intensive.” 

If this preparatory work is done carefully, and 
sensitiveness to the leadership of the Holy Spirit 
is magnified, any church anywhere on earth may 
have a Pentecost. A passion for the work and 
organisation of the work are both absolutely 
essential. 


VI 
WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 


HE method of Visitation Evangelism may 
be launched the moment the preparatory 
work is done. ‘The season of the year is 

immaterial. ‘The only time that we must avoid is 
the summer vacation period, which takes a large 
percentage of the people out of the community, or 
brings in a large number who are to be cared for 
in the homes of the people upon whom we would 
call. But there are ten months of the year which 
can be used for this work. ‘There are no exceptions 
to this statement. ‘The weather is a consideration, 
but from the opposite point of view of the old 
method. ‘he worse the weather, the better the 
chances of success; people are more liable to be 
home when it is raining; those who are calling will 
be able to find them. | 

After the preparatory work has been carefully 
done, the campaign should be launched—on a Sun- 
day. It is well to have a director; in fact, I should 
not advise any church to launch its first campaign 
without some minister who has one or more week’s 
experience in this work. A man who is acquainted 
with technique of the work gains confidence, speaks 


55 


56 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


with authority and proceeds with an assurance 
which are invaluable to those who have never done 
this work before. This director should visit the 
various departments of the Sunday School, speak 
about ten minutes in each department, and tell in 
the clearest and most direct manner just what is to 
be done that week. He should attempt to win co- 
operation in these departments. At the regular 
morning preaching hour, he should preach a sermon 
in which he magnifies the fact that Jesus can save 
this world for the Kingdom of God just the minute 
that the laymen will volunteer to carry the message. 
‘The laymen should be led to see that the great 
unused resource of the church is the combined per- 
sonality of its laity. At 2:30 in the afternoon he 
should meet the workers. He should go over in the 
most careful manner the background, technique, 
and appeals of Visitation Evangelism. ‘That we 
may be clear here, I will cover these three things 
briefly. | 

1. The background of the method. We have 
been driven to attempt a new method because we 
are in a new day of evangelism. Mass evangelism 
has very largely served its day and is gone, or is 
going. Visitation evangelism is in accordance 
with Jesus’ own work. He won His followers by 
personal contact; His immediate disciples won 
folks by the personal contact method. The mem- 
bers of the early church extended the work of the 
church and the Kingdom of God by personal inter- 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 57 


view. The laymen who will do this work today 
will have amazing results. One director of this 
work has directed laymen who have won in ten 
months of work over ten thousand people, to de- 
cisions for Christ and for church membership. _ 

2. Technique. The workers should be instructed 
to be direct, courteous, and persistent. The mo- 
ment they meet a person at the door, they should 
announce their errand in some such manner as this, 
“Our church has set aside a week in which we are 
attempting to call upon every man, woman, boy, 
and girl in this community who has any connection 
with our church and who, so far as we know, has 
never made a decision for Christ.” Then, after 
getting into the home (always get in: if a person 
does not invite you in, say, “ We'll only take a few 
moments of your time, may we please come in and 
go over the matter with you?”’) ask him, “ Have 
you ever been a member of any Christian church? ” 
It will depend upon the person’s answer as to how 
the workers will proceed. If the person says he 
was a member of such-and-such a church in some 
other place, then it will be a good thing to say 
something like this, “ Give us the information and 
our pastor will send for your church-letter.”” Never 
say, “ Don’t you think you should send for your 
letter?’ “ When will you let us get your letter?” 
or “ How soon may the pastor send for your let- 
ter?” Such questions suggest that there are two 
sides to the matter of church transfer. There is 


58 VISITATION EVANGELISM ’ 


only one side. A person has no right to live in one 
community and belong to a church in some other 
place—it is impossible to send one’s personality by 
proxy. He is either functioning for Christ and 
the Church in the place where he lives, or nowhere. 
Put the matter in a constructive sentence like this, 
“ Give us the information and our pastor will send — 
for your letter.” 

It may be, however, that even when you put your 
request in this form, the person will hesitate on 
account of sentimental associations. He will tell 
you that his mother and father were members of 
that church for twenty years, that he met his wife 
there, that they were married by the pastor, and 
that their babies were baptised there. If he does 
this, remind him that he was fortunate enough to 
have a father and mother who were loyal enough 
to their religious responsibility to assume their local 
Christian and church relationship; that every 
reason which argued that they should be careful 
about their religious duties and privileges, also 
argues that he and his wife should be definitely 
related where they live. If you do not succeed at 
this point on account of these sentimental associ- 
ations, then do the rather severe thing of suggesting 
to him that the pastor back there at the old church 
will be glad to remove his membership from that 
church to some other. This will probably be an 
absolutely new consideration to the person. He 
felt that they cherished his membership back there 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH BO 


in the old church, when as a matter of fact, any 
pastor feels that he is doing his friend the very 
best service by getting him related to the church in 
the community where he lives. This argument 
usually brings his permission to get the transfer. 
On the other hand, we will suppose that the man 
says he has never been a member of any church. 
Then I would suggest proceeding by asking several 
direct questions to discover just what the man’s 
attitude is toward Christ and Church. If you dis- 
cover, as we do in numerous instances, that his 
attitude is friendly, insist, in a tactful, gracious 
manner, to get an immediate decision. My own 
method is to ask him if he is willing to accept Jesus 
Christ as his Saviour, and to confess Him as his 
Lord and Master; if he receives and professes the 
Christian faith as contained in the New Testament 
of our Lord Jesus Christ? I ask him whether he 
will be loyal to the Church and uphold it by his 
prayer, his presence, his gifts and his service? If 
he answers in the affirmative, thén I indicate to 
him the fact that I would like to have him make 
this statement: that he accepts Jesus Christ as his 
persona! Saviour and purposes, with His help, to 
live a Christian life and do all he can to help carry 
out His entire program; that he will unite with a 
church which he indicates as his choice and will 
present himself for membership at that church 
upon a definite Sunday. If I find that it is more 
difficult to win him than this description just given 


60 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


indicates, then I proceed to make one of several 
appeals. 

3. Appeals. ‘There is the appeal to conscience. 
Every person on earth knows the difference be- 
tween right and wrong. A worker should take 
advantage of this fact. If I were calling upon a 
father and were going to make the appeal to con- 
science, I would proceed somewhat after this 
fashion as indicated on an earlier page. “ You 
would not live in a community where there were 
no public schools if you could avoid it?” 

The answer would always be, “ No.” 

Then I would remind him that the public school 
was the product of the Christian Church. “ You 
would not live in a community where there was no 
system of jurisprudence?” 

His answer again would be, “ No.” 

Then I would suggest that the system of juris- 
prudence which we have has many protective 
features which have been fostered and nurtured in 
the Christian Church. ‘‘ You would not live where 
there was no opportunity to send your children to 
Sunday school?” 

In most instances, his answer again would be, 
“ No.” 

Then I would again remind him that the Sunday 
school is perpetuated by the gifts and leadership of 
the people in the church. I would then directly and 
frankly impress him with the fact that he was de- 
manding a certain kind of social environment, 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 61 


which is in a real sense Christian, in which to rear 
his children; that this demand made him mutually 
responsible with every other person in the com- 
munity who made a like demand; that just at 
present he seemed to be assuming that somebody 
else would carry his religious responsibility; that 
that really was not the thing he would choose to 
do when he realised that he was doing it. I would 
call his attention to the fact that the only way to 
perpetuate any institution is to invest personality 
in it. I would ask him if he did not think it per- 
fectly fair to expect him to put his life into the 
Church if he desired the continuance of the kind 
of an environment which he now demanded in the 
community where he was building his home? 

This presentation of Christian citizenship will 
have a challenge in it that he never saw before. 
He will realise that he has the opportunity to pour 
his life and spiritual energy into the life of his 
children, not only through the home, but through 
every other institution in the community which he 
needs to supplement the work of the home, if he 
is to reach the highest goal that he has in mind for 
his children. If I were talking to a mother, I 
should make the same appeal. If I were talking to 
a youth, I should attempt to persuade him that 
he was not using his time and talents properly 
and ask him if he were not preparing himself 
for some really constructive and altruistic pur- 
pose in the world. Now this appeal in either 


62 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


instance is an appeal to conscience—as to whether 
the person is using his physical strength, his 
mental ability, and the influence of his person- 
ality for the purpose that God intended—as to 
whether he is really fair to himself, to others, and 
<o his Heavenly Father. 

The second appeal is the appeal for a Christian 
home. ‘This is a tender and beautiful appeal. I 
never direct a campaign without having a number 
of experiences with this method of approach which 
would furnish memories that would recompense me 
for a lifetime of service. I meet parents in their 
homes and ask them such a question as this: “ Of 
course you want to have a Christian home?” If 
you have the children gathered around you, if per- 
haps you have some fine little laddie on your knee, 
ask father and mother if it be not true that they 
would do anything on earth that was possible and 
legitimate to secure the spiritual and moral stand- 
ards of the laddie? Remind them, too, that God 
gives the fingers of mothers and fathers a power 
to paint into the background of the child’s life, a 
beauty superior to any other beauty on earth. 

Whenever I call where there are children who 
have not made their Christian decision, I start with 
them. ‘The question arises here, of course, as to 
at what age a child should consider this matter? 
At one time I had a minimum age, but my own 
children violated it. When I first enrolled in the 
academy, I remember that the first teachers in child 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 63 


psychology that there were in that day, agreed that 
the age of accountability was sixteen years. Before 
I finished college, they had decided that it was 
twelve years. Recently they have decided that the 
age of choice, for that is what they call it now, is 
eleven years. The minimum age that I used to ob- 
serve in this work was twelve years, but my own 
little laddie came home from church two consecu- 
tive Sundays crying and saying to his mother, “I 
want to be a Christian, Mamma.” 

His mother, thank God, knew how Christ had 
declared the children were Christians. She said, 
“Farl, my boy, you are a Christian, but do you 
mean that you want to go forward in the church 
and in that way tell everybody that you want to 
continue to be a friend of Jesus; that you want 
Him to go with you all through the years of your 
life as your Companion? ” 

“Yes, Mamma,” he replied. 

The next Sunday when I gave the opportunity 
for any one who desired to confess his faith in 
Christ and join the church to come forward, Earl 
came down the aisle. As he came toward the altar, 
the thought occurred to me that it was really God’s 
work ; that there is no time in all the life of a person 
when it is quite so wise for him to choose Jesus’ 
companionship as it is at that first moment when he 
chooses Jesus to be his friend forever—just at 
that moment he is old enough to become a Chris- 
tian by his own choice. Up to that minute he is a 


64 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Christian through the nurture of Christian envi- 
ronment and by virtue of the fact that every child 
on earth is a Christian. ‘Therefore, I always begin 
my appeal with the children, and after having won 
the children, I then proceed to win the parents. 

I once directed a Visitation Evangelism cam- 
paign in St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church at 
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. One night after the workers’ 
supper, a young man came hurrying to me and said, 
“Dr, Kernahan, please give this evening to me.” 

“ Paul,” I said, “I am afraid that Dr. Jayne has 
already assigned me to some one else. You go over 
and ask Dr. Jayne.” Dr. Jayne told him that I was 
to work that evening with Mr. A. L. Killian, one 
of the outstanding merchants of the city. Then I 
said, “ You ask Mr. Killian, Paul, if I can give you 
thirty minutes and we will make that one call that 
you mentioned especially.” 

“Why, surely, Paul,’ Mr. Killian said; “ you 
and Mr. Kernahan jump into my car and I will 
take you over.” 

We had no sooner arrived in the home where 
Paul directed us than the father came in and said, 
“ Paul, my answer tonight is exactly the same as it 
was last night and the night before.” I then dis- 
covered that Paul had laid siege to that home; this 
made three calls in three consecutive nights. If l 
had known that Paul had called on the two previous 
nights, I would have advised him to wait a day or 
so before he made another call; but we were there 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 65 


and we had met a flat refusal. (This is about the 
worst situation that you can meet in this work.) 
Fortunately a boy about nineteen years of age came 
in the front door, and just at the same time the 
mother, with a girl about twelve years of age and 
a boy of fifteen came in from the dining room. 

This was exceedingly encouraging to me. I felt 
that now we could get around and past the father’s 
refusal. I turned to the older boy. Usually I start 
with the youngest child, but for some reason which 
I am not now able to explain, I commenced with 
the older boy. I said to him, “ You want to bea - 
Christian.” 

“Yes, I do,” he answered. 

“T£ I remember correctly,” I continued, “ when 
I was a young man of your age, I thought that to 
be a Christian meant to be willing to consecrate my 
body, my mind, and all that I had to Christ and 
His service. I felt that it was necessary to learn 
all that I could about Jesus and to be just as much 
like Him as I possibly could. Are you willing to 
do that?” 

“Ves, I am!” he answered emphatically. 

“Can you answer these questions?” I asked him. 
I then repeated to him the three questions which 
we ask people who are being received into our 
church: “Do you receive Jesus Christ as your 
Saviour and confess Him as your Lord and Mas- 
ter? Do you receive and profess the Christian 
faith as taught in the New Testament of our Lord 


66 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Jesus Christ? Will you be loyal to the church and 
uphold it by your prayer, your presence, your gifts 
and your service? ”’ 

He had answered each question in the affirma~ 
tive. We clasped hands, bowed our heads and had 
a word of prayer. 

Then I turned to the boy fifteen years of age 
and had a very similar conversation with him. He 
was easily won. Then I talked to the little girl 
twelve years of age, and explained the questions in 
her own language. She, of course, was willing to 
be a Christian. Then I directed my appeal to the 
mother. She was a typical mother; she could not 
resist the pull of the fact that her children were 
ready to take their places in the Church and grow 
into splendid Christian citizens. She made her 
decision. 

Then I turned to the father and said, “‘ Dad, here 
is your family. If you make your decision for 
Christ while your oldest boy is at home, you will 
have to do it pretty soon, for if he does as most 
sons do, he will be gone from home in two or three 
years; and you wouldn’t let him go away from 
home with the thought that Dad refused to make 
his Christian decision when he was at home and 
wanted him to come at the same time that he made 
his decision. You wouldn’t send him away like 
that. And, here is your boy fifteen years of age. 
You know how vital it is to his Christian growth 
that he have your example. No person can take 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 67 


your place. He has a right to expect you to stand 
with him at the altar and swear your allegiance to 
Jesus Christ, who helps every good man in the 
business of growing big souls in his children. Here 
is your little girl. How fortunate it is that she 
desires to make her choice of Christ and His lead- 
ership just now when she is young. You, together 
with mother here, are giving yourselves for this 
little girl and her brothers, whom you want to suc- 
ceed to the very highest degree in this noble under- 
taking. Your little girl has a right to expect her 
father to choose her Christ as his Lord.’ 

The big railroad man stood up, showed a good 
deal of emotion, and said he would do anything in 
the world for his children. 

“Then be a Christian for their sakes,” I said. 

He said, “I will.’ This is the appeal for a 
Christian home. 

I told this story once at Morningside College, 
Sioux City, Iowa, and one of the students said, 
“Mr. Kernahan, how deep does a decision like that 
go when a parent makes his decision for his chil- 
dren’s sake?” 

“If I understand the human heart at all, it goes 
about as deep as anything in all his experience,” I 
answered. “Many parents will make their de- 
cision for the Christian life for the sake of their 
children who would not do it for their own sakes 
because of reticence and other similar obstructions.” 

The third appeal is for service. This is directly 


68 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


in keeping with the spirit of today. We do not 
have much respect for a man’s testimony of Chris- 
tian loyalty and devotion unless that man is doing 
something for society and for God. Of course 
there is one exception. ‘There are some people who 
are physically disabled, old and infirm, who have 
rich Christian experiences and cannot work, but 
these are exceptions. ‘To be able to convince people 
that they can take whatever personal ability God 
has given them and use it for the sake of society, is 
necessary. ‘This appeal succeeds with people of 
wealth, influence, and strong personality. It also 
succeeds with youth. 

On one occasion we went to call upon a man in 
a large office building in a great city. He was 
rich. We had some difficulty in getting to his 
private office, but finally we were ushered into his 
presence. “ What do you want?” he said. 

“We have come to talk to you about the Chris- 
tian life,” I replied—* about the Christian Church, 
and about the necessity of a man of your standing 
and ability investing his personality in it.” 

“This is a very busy morning,” he returned. 
“TI am negotiating a loan of a million and-a-half 
dollars to the corporation across the street here that 
is constructing the new building on the opposite 
corner.” | 

“Give us ten minutes of your time, please,” I 
answered.’ 

“Go ahead,” he said. 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 69 


In the next ten minutes we told him about every- 
thing we could about colleges, hospitals, and insti- 
tutions of all kinds and descriptions. We showed 
him that for the first time in the history of organ- 
ised Christianity the Church was attempting to 
eliminate duplication of work; that an actual as- 
signing of the various areas of the earth’s surface 
was being undertaken so that no two churches 
would be working in the same place and overlap- 
ping work. We did all we could to show him that 
the Church needed Christian statesmanship; that 
no man had a right to use his own abilities for his 
own interests alone. I held my watch in my hand 
and noticed that we were within one minute of the 
expiration of the ten-minute limit. I used that one 
minute in the most impassioned appeal that I knew 
how to make; saying that I did not believe that 
any man, who had a strong enough personality to 
be employed by six different corporations, had any 
right to sell his personality and his managerial 
powers to secular corporations alone, and neglect 
his responsibility to the Church, which must be 
perpetuated and become prosperous by the invest- 
ment of the same kind of personality and leader- 
ship as these other organisations. ‘The last minute 
slipped away, and I said, “Our ten minutes are 
gone; I thank you for your time. We expect that 
you will give this matter careful consideration.” 

“T will call you up in a couple of days,” he 
answered. 


70 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


This was very encouraging, for this man had 
an executive type of mind, and I knew that he 
would not call us up unless he felt that he would 
have something to say after the exercise of careful 
consideration. 

On Thursday evening after the workers’ supper 
the telephone bell rang. I answered it. It was 
this wealthy man, and he said, “Is this Mr. 
Kernahan? ” 

I answered that it was. 

“Tam Mr. So-and-so,”’ he went on. “ Will you 
please come over?” 

“‘T will come at once,” I replied. 

I do not know when I had ever wanted so much 
to win a person to the Christian life. We hurried 
over to his home and he received us graciously. 

“T have thought the matter over about which we 
were talking the other day,” he said, “and if the 
minister will receive me into the church, I will be 
there a week from Sunday morning to make my 
confession of faith, as you suggested, and be re- 
ceived into church membership.” I was so glad 
over this decision that I could scarcely control my 
feelings. Then he called his wife. She came into 
the parlour, a beautiful woman, undoubtedly a 
woman of great influence, and he said, “ Mary, I 
have told these gentlemen that I am ready to make 
my confession of faith in Christ and be received 
into church membership. What do you think 
about it?” 


WHEN AND HOW TO LAUNCH 71 


“Oh, you know what I think about it,” she 
answered; ‘‘ I have wanted to do this for years.” 

“Then will you come with me a week from Sun- 
day morning?” the husband asked.. 

“ Of course I will,” the wife replied. ‘ There 
isn’t anything that you could ask me to do that I 
would do more gladly.” 

The man then called his boy Carl. A big, ath- 
letic boy, possibly twenty years of age, came into 
the room. Turning to him the father said, “ Carl, 
will you forgive me?”’ 

“What on earth are you talking about, Dad?” 
replied the boy. 

“T haven’t given you the religious instruction 
and training I should,” his father answered. “I 
have not given you the example in church attend- 
ance that I should. Will you forgive me?” Now, 
remember, this was the man who a few days before 
did not think that he had time to talk with us. 

Carl said, “ Why, of course, Dad, I will for- 
give you.” 

“ Well, then, Carl,” the father said, “ will you 
come with Mother and myself to the church a week 
from Sunday morning and there make your con- 
fession of faith and be received into church 
membership?” 

The big fellow shot out his hand and gripped his 
father’s hand and said, “‘ Dad, I will be with you!” 
It was the appeal for service that had attracted in- 
terest and convicted this father. The father had 


72 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


invited all the members of the family to become 
Christians, and they had accepted his invitation. 

The fourth appeal is the one with which all 
pastors who have had any experience with revival 
services are well acquainted. It was about the only 
appeal that was made at one time in the history of 
evangelism. It is the exhortation to be prepared 
for the Hereafter, to develop capacity to enjoy 
Heaven, to be sure of the other world. The only 
place that we use this appeal now is where death 
has recently made the other world seem very near. 
Iam not discussing the merits of this appeal; I am 
simply saying that the only place where it succeeds 
now is where Heaven seems very near because some 
loved one has taken up his residence there. 

The very interesting fact about the method of 
Visitation Evangelism is that the difficulty of sea- 
sons and the interruptions of bad weather are elimi- 
nated. The campaign may be put on at any time 
with success assured. Any group of laymen who 
are led to fully appreciate the tremendous value of 
adapting their aggressive evangelistic work to this 
new day, who are given instructions in the tech- 
nique of the work, and furnished with the sweep- 
ing instructions concerning the four outstanding 
appeals, will have phenomenal success. 


Vil 
WORKERS’ REPORTS 


N our last chapter we advised that the cam- 

‘paign be not launched without having the 

advantages of a director who had actually 
experienced one or more of these campaigns. 

He sends the visitors out immediately after his 
address on Sunday afternoon. They have been 
assigned a number of people who are the most 
likely to make their decision. The sooner they get 
to their work after his last word of instruction, 
the better. We have often failed in personal evan- 
gelism in the Church because of our inability to 
get the workers actually to put into practice the 
things that have been told them in their instructions. 

Now it is very important that these workers have 
the experience of winning a number to Christ 
before the Sunday evening meeting. They come 
back to the church on Sunday night with the glad 
news that five, or ten, or twenty, or fifty were won 
this afternoon.. This news is the finest kind of 
publicity. It does not build up resistance, but it 
does give the workers enthusiasm, and at the same 
time brings a very gratifying response from the 
community outside of the church, At the Sunday 


73 


74 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


evening service the workers are given some further 
assignments and instructed to report back at the 
Monday night workers’ supper and conference. 
The workers bring their cards to the Monday night 
service with notations concerning their work upon 
the cards. If they have won the person, they write 
** won ”’ across the face of the card. If they failed 
to win the person, they write the reason why and 
make follow-up recommendations. If they feel 
that they can make further progress by a second 
call, they indicate that on the card. If, on the 
other hand, they are quite sure that some other 
team would have better success, they suggest that 
it would be well to re-assign the card. 

The director looks these cards over while the 
teams are eating, and discovers what the particular 
situations are that have been met by the workers up 
to this time. He also discovers what visitors have 
had the best success. He chooses from three to five 
of these workers to make reports, instructing them 
to tell about their successes, and to relate the prob- 
lems that they have met. ‘The enthusiasm of those 
who have been especially successful becomes dyna- 
mic in the meetings. These reports must be made 
in two minutes. Brevity is of great importance in 
this workers’ conference. ‘The minute that these 
werkers have finished their reports, the director 
should launch into his ten or twelve minute address, 
meeting the problems that the workers have discov- 
ered with the tersest and most direct answer. The 


WORKERS’ REPORTS 75 


spiritual situation is fully taken care of by the en- 
thusiasm of the workers who have tasted that sub- 
lime experience. of being actually instrumental in 
winning some person to the Christian life. A psy- 
chological situation is set up when the workers find 
the director answering the problems that they dis- 
covered in their work thus far. His instructions 
are inculcated into their very nature as they pro- 
ceed to their work. ‘They do not become stereo- 
typed, for they have already done the work in their 
own way—they simply receive the information 
which they felt they needed so badly, and instead 
of the answers of the director being used in a 
memoriter way, they become a very part of the 
workers’ mental and spiritual furnishings. 

The fact that the workers are given definite as- 
signments every evening and are expected to make 
a definite report the next evening, is of immense 
value in this work. It rescues evangelism from 
the vague, disorganised, hap-hazard method, where 
some lazy person has said that he did not feel that 
the Holy Spirit led him to go to his friend, and 
puts it upon the substantial basis where the Holy 
Spirit can actually be heard and is quite likely to 
be obeyed. The Kingdom of God will reap a 
harvest heretofore undreamed of, because of the 
fact that the unfathomable spiritual depths of the 
laity are directed to a definite purpose by this 
method. 


VIIl 


INSTRUCTION OF THE WORKERS 


OST classes in personal evangelism that I 
have observed have met for a few weeks, 
have been instructed in the way to do the 

work, and then have never done it. There is a 
very obvious reason for this fact. The workers 
were given a number of questions and answers. 
They were given a number of Scriptural refer- 
ences. Certain inspirational subject-matter was 
read and discussed. ‘They became more and more 
stereotyped as the classes proceeded. The answers 
that they had for the various questions that they 
anticipated would be asked, became a thing of 
memory rather than a passionate reaching out of 
the worker’s own spirit for the one with whom he 
was talking. ‘The person’s personality was being 
covered up; he was becoming stiff and stilted. We 
proceed with the conviction that the biggest thing 
that a man has, so far as his human equipment is 
concerned, is his own personality; and when he 
goes out to work, he should go with the determina- 
tion to be natural. God expects us to be natural. 
We are most persuasive when we are natural. 
When the workers go out after the Sunday af- 


76 


INSTRUCTION OF THE WORKERS -~ 77 


ternoon meeting, they go with their hearts bare 
for the task. They have been told that the best 
way to succeed is to be themselves; to give just 
whatever they have of intellectual and emotional. 
power to this one task, to discover themselves; 
and then dedicate themselves to this business of 
Jesus. Consequently, they win the confidence of 
the people to whom they are talking. It is very 
evident that there is no ulterior purpose. A rich 
friendship often develops. The worker finds that 
in winning his neighbour to himself, he has also 
won him to Christ. 

On Monday night we find that the workers have 
discovered several peculiar situations. We find 
that in answer to their invitation to become fol- 
lowers of Christ, people most always say: “I will 
think it over.” “We may move.” “ There are 
too many hypocrites in the Church.” ‘ Can I not 
be as good without becoming a member of the 
church?” “TI do not feel like it.” 

We instruct the workers to be very careful to 
discover when a man says, “I will think it over,” 
whether he is just trying to dodge the appeal, or 
whether he really does desire time for further con- 
sideration. However, nine times out of ten when 
we receive this answer, the person is simply at- 
tempting to postpone his decision. A large per- 
centage of people have thought it over. What they 
need is not further thought about it, but to be 
‘persuaded to act upon the thing that they already 


78 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


believe. If the person is really sincere in his wish 
for further consideration, then we instruct the 
workers to give him a kindly, direct, frank state- 
ment of what it is to be a Christian today, and 
make a date for a return call. 

We instruct the workers to meet the answer, 
“We may move,” in this manner: Suggest to that 
person that probably that is the main reason why 
he should make his Christian decision; that he 
should confess his faith in Christ among a group 
of people whom he knows and join the church in 
this community; and that the pastor will be de- 
lighted to transfer his membership to the new town 
or city to which he moves; that this will be a splen- 
did way to become acquainted with the Christian 
people of the new community. I tell the workers 
to keep it in their minds that there are many 
families who are on the threshold of moving all 
the time. | 

When the workers meet the answer, “ There are 
too many hypocrites in the Church,” I tell them to 
admit frankly that there are; but to remind the 
person who says this that the Church is subject to 
the same weaknesses as any other human institu- 
tion; that the question, however, that faces any 
particular person is not a responsibility for the in- 
consistency, weaknesses, and sins of some in the 
Church ; but his own responsibility for his religious 
obligations. ‘The question that faces him is whether 
religion is important to him, whether he believes 


INSTRUCTION OF THE WORKERS 79 


in the reality of Christ, whether he should actually 
confess his faith in Jesus Christ as his Saviour, 
whether he can be true to Christ and stay outside 
of the institution that Jesus loves so much? For, 
even before the Church was organised, Jesus antici- 
pated its organisation and spoke of the Church as 
His Bride. I think He used this term because it 
was the most affectionate term that He could use; 
and He has chosen the Church as the primary in- 
stitution for the teaching and preaching of the 
Christian religion for over nineteen hundred years. 
Of course, it is impossible to wave away any per- 
son’s responsibility by simply pointing to men and 
women inside of the Church who fail to measure 
up to their God-given privilege. I call their atten- 
tion to the fact that in Jesus’ first group of twelve, 
there was Judas; and that one of the beautiful 
things about Jesus’ attitude then was that He did 
not become agitated, sour, and critical; He simply 
went on patiently serving mankind until Judas 
eliminated himself. We are not responsible for the 
other man’s failure. We are responsible for our 
influence 4nd for the perpetuation’of the Christian 
Church, if we believe in the superiority of Jesus as 
a religious leader. 

If I find that the visitors have met the answer, 
which is in the form of a question, “‘ Can I not be 
good without joining the Church?” I make the 
following suggestions: This really is not the ques- 
tion that the person is facing at all. We are not 


80 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


particularly interested in just how good a person 
can be outside of the Church. There is one sure 
thing about it, however, that if a person is good 
outside of the Church, he should immediately thank 
the Church for his goodness. Every moral stand- 
ard he has, has either been made and then lifted 
up by the Church, or else has been found and filled 
full of life and significance by it. His moral 
stamina to resist the evil forces and influences that 
attack every living being is undoubtedly the prod- 
uct of inheritance and teaching that the Church 
has provided for him. He should face frankly, 
then, the question as to whether he can really ex- 
press his gratitude for what he has received with- 
out putting his life into the Church. He has 
received what he has of morality because others 
were willing to perpetuate a religious environment 
and the Christian Church: He surely should be 
willing and glad to pass on to posterity the things 
that he has received in the only possible way; that 
is by giving his influence and the push of his spirit 
to Christ’s Church. 

I also remind him that there is really something 
further to consider in the matter of one’s decision. 
We should meet Christ’s attitude in this matter. 
Usually Christ’s attitude is accepted as authority 
by good people. What does He expect? How 
does He feel about the Church? Does He want 
the Church continued? Has He been able to use it 
in the past? Where have the reforms which have 


INSTRUCTION OF THE WORKERS 81 


made the progress in the moral history of the 
human race been fostered and empowered? Does 
not Jesus refer to the Church as His Bride? I 
remind the person further that he can claim no 
freedom from obligation to the perpetuation of an 
institution that he demands in the life of the world. 
If he has a right to stay outside the Church, then 
every other good man has right to stay outside of 
the Church. ‘The ultimate status of the Church 
under such conditions would be tragic indeed— 
there would be no Church. I keep ever in the heart 
of every one of these suggestions, the moving, 
warming spirit of a living, loving Christ attempting 
to win His brother back to the Father’s home. 
When the workers meet the answer, “I do not 
feel like it,” I attempt to help them by giving them 
this statement : that feeling is not an infallible proof 
that the Son of Man is knocking at the heart’s 
door; that there is great danger of emphasising 
feeling beyond its legitimate proportions. Feeling 
should not be placed first in this consideration. The 
question is not, “ Do I feel like it?” It is rather, 
“ Should I do it?” Feeling comes as an accom- 
paniment to a good decision. We are somewhat to 
blame for this misplaced emphasis. I am perfectly 
frank to tell a person who is troubled thus that 
thousands have been misled at this point. Our 
fathers had so much to say about feeling that some 
of us were made to believe that it was the thing 
of most consequence. ‘The only possible way for 


82 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Jesus to get into the heart of a man is through his 
brain. This may sound dogmatic, but it is not. It 
is true that a man who is wrong and sinful should 
have a change of heart, but he can never get a 
change of heart until he changes his mind. When 
a man does change his mind, then the Heavenly 
Father will be sure to change his heart. 

It is at this point that a man’s spiritual destiny 
is settled. If he chooses to remain stubborn and 
rebellious, all the spiritual forces on earth can not 
change his life. I talked for over an hour with a 
man one night in Tipton, Iowa. We went back 
and forth over this old battlefield where so many 
young people have died spiritual deaths because 
they tried to get the feeling of their fathers and 
mothers. When I finally succeeded in convincing 
him that his attitude was wrong, his significant 
statement was, “Then I have been taught wrong. 
It seems reasonable that if I accept Jesus, seek His 
pardon for lost time and sins committed, He will 
accept me; but all of my life I have stayed outside 
of the Church and have refused to become a Chris- 
tian because I was not able to have the experience 
that my parents used to talk about.” This is the 
first thing that must be done;—to persuade men 
and women to accept Jesus Christ at His word 
and the emotional element will have its place; but 
with this kind of an emphasis, the emotional sua- 
sion that comes to a man as he clasps the hand of 
Christ and in a perfectly natural and manly way 


INSTRUCTION OF THE WORKERS 83 


swears his allegiance to his Heavenly Friend, will 
be used in substantial Christian service, instead of 
being dissipated in more or less selfish ecstasy. 

As the evenings of the week pass, we deal with 
all of the questions that come up out of the work 
in the homes of the people. When this group has 
finished the week’s work, they have become skilled 
in the art of meeting without argument or offense 
the questions that come as they continue in the 
blessed enterprise of evangelising their community. 


TX 


CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 


VERY church should have a program of 

evangelism which produces results all of 

the time. Sporadic attempts are disap- 
pointing. Spasmodic evangelistic projects disor- 
ganise the regular work of the church and fail to 
lead to the most wholesome results. Normal 
Christians bear fruit regularly if they are organ- 
ised to work systematically. If they are not 
directed in a definite enterprise, they flounder, and 
the God-given ambition to bring folks back to the 
Heavenly Father is drowned beneath other ambi- 
tions less spiritual. 

Visitation Evangelism furnishes a continuous 
program for every church. The first “ intensive” 
campaign demonstrates to the whole church that 
laymen can succeed in this work. It creates a pas- 
sion for souls. The people who do the work are 
zealous to continue it; the people who observe their 
efforts are led to enroll as workers. 

On the last night of the “ intensive” campaign 
the visitors should be organised into a permanent 
committee on evangelism. The pastor should 
always be the chairman. I proceed by asking the 


84 


\ 


CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM . 85 


workers, “ What would you think of organising 
so that we. may continue this work the year 
around?” ‘There is always a unanimous vote. 
The people are eager to do it; they have been 
caught in the contagion of this experience. 

Then I outline the work of the committee thus: 
There are two things this committee can do. They 
can continue at the call of the pastor to do this 
work. A few weeks after this “intensive,” they 
should call upon the indifferent people of the church 
who have ceased to attend Divine worship. This 
is the most effective church attendance campaign 
that can be conducted, for these people have been 
actually fitted by their experience in the visitation 
campaign to make a winsome and persuasive ap- 
peal. I suggest to them when they go to these 
homes of church members who have lost out in 
the church, to appeal to them in this manner: to 
inform them that the church just recently has re- 
ceived into its membership fifty, one hundred and 
fifty, or two hundred, whatever the number may 
be; that it is one of the great triumphs, if not the 
greatest triumph, that their church has ever had; 
that it would be a spiritual disaster of far-reaching 
consequence if their church were to fail in properly 
training, nurturing, and directing these new Chris- 
tian disciples; that, therefore, it is quite necessary 
that the people who are already members of the 
church should consecrate themselves to the task 
of establishing these new members in the life and 


86 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


heart of their fellowship. This is a far greater 
appeal than to go to an indifferent church member 
and say, “ We should like to have you come to 
church—we think you should come to church.” 
This type of invitation smacks too much of the 
argument of duty for duty’s sake. It doesn’t get 
a very big response. The first invitation here men- 
tioned reveals the heart of Jesus to the man who 
has allowed other things to take the place of 
his Lord. 

The Committee should be divided into three 
sub-committees : 

1. Committee on Church Letters. 

2. Committee on Christian Decision. 

3. Committee on Infant Baptism. 
This third committee, of course, would not be 
needed in a church which does not practise Infant 
Baptism. 

These Committees are furnished with the infor- 
mation necessary for their work in this way: the 
Sunday school and every Society and Auxiliary of 
the church should have an Information Blank to 
be filled out by each person who enrolls. For ex- 
ample, suppose that a child enrolls in the Sabbath 
school and the information on his card reveals the 
fact that his father and mother are members of a 
church somewhere else. It will be the duty of the 
Committee on Church Letters, always co-operating 
with the pastor, to see that some team of persons 
gets to that home at once and secures their trans- 


CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 87 


fers. It is much easier to get people to transfer 
their membership during the first six months of 
their residence in a place than it is after they have 
been there six years, and many people have lost 
their religious habits within a much shorter time 
than that. Suppose again that this Information 
Card reveals the fact that there is someone in the 
home who has never made a Christian decision. It 
will then be the duty of the Committee on Christian 
Decisions to go to this home immediately and make 
an appeal for a Christian decision. Suppose, in the 
third place, that the Information Card handed in, 
we will say from the Men’s Bible Class, shows the 
fact that there is an infant child in the home. It 
will be the duty of the Committee on Infant Bap- 
tism, co-operating with the pastor, to go to this 
home or send someone to invite these people to 
dedicate their child to God in Christian baptism. 
This will furnish one of the best opportunities to 
make an appeal to the child’s father and mother, 
that they consecrate their lives to God and assist 
Him in training their child in religious habits and 
in Christian conduct. The pastor will probably 
have some method whereby he gets information 
concerning the visitors and transients who attend 
the public services of worship. This information 
would be classified by the Committee and used in 
the same way as the Information Card mentioned 
above. 

Any church that will follow this method will be 


88 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


in immediate and constant contact with a very 
large percentage of its constituency all of the time. 
There will be continuous accessions to the church. 
At Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church in New 
Bedford, Mass., we left an organisation of this 
kind, just as we leave them in all of the churches 
where we hold a campaign. ‘The members contin- 
ued their work; and while we had won one hundred 
and fifteen people during the five days of the cam- 
paign, at the end of the Conference year they had 
won and received into church membership a total 
of two hundred and twenty-seven, the largest num- 
ber received by any church in the New England 
Southern Conference that year. In a little church 
of two hundred and two members in the city of 
Chicago, we urged the people to continue this work. 
While we were there we won one hundred and 
thirty-two new members. Nine weeks after the 
campaign, they had gained more than two hundred 
new people, and had more than doubled their mem- 
bership in the short period of ten weeks. In St. 
Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church at Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa, they won more people during the 
two months following the campaign than they did 
in the immediate campaign. 

This is the kind of evangelism that leaves the 
regular working force of the church far stronger at 
the close of the campaign than it is at the begin- 
ning. Any one who directs this method in any 
church is able to leave with this church a system 


CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 89 


that becomes an indispensable part of their program 
for the establishment of the commonwealth of Jesus 
upon earth. 





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THE DISCOVERIES OF VISITATION 
EVANGELISM 


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xX 


CONVERSION AND VISITATION 
EVANGELISM 


ESUS gave us a splendid example when He 
talked with Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathan- 
ael, Matthew, Nicodemus, and Mary Mag- 
dalene. ‘The records show that Jesus was far more 
interested in the person’s attitude toward Him and 
His Father than He was in any definition of con- 
version. ‘These stories indicate to us that all a 
person needs to do in order to become a Christian 
is to follow Jesus. 

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? 
To be a follower of Jesus means to be willing to 
live like Jesus, to love like Jesus, to work like Jesus, 
and, if necessary, to suffer for the welfare of your 
friends like Jesus. Often during the history of 
the Christian Church we have become so tangled up 
with certain sectarian trappings that we have lost 
sight of the most important consideration and ex- 
perience. We have muttered religious formulas. 
Jesus has been obscured by partial statements of 
the truth about this or that matter. We have tried 
to force all kinds of temperament through the same 
kind of a religious experience at the time of con- 


93 


94 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


version. ‘The time has come when we should take 
Jesus at His own word and believe Him when He 
says, “He that follows Me, let him take up his 
cross,” or “ Whosoever will, may come,” or “I am 
come that ye might have life and that ye might have 
it more abundantly’; therefore the type of con- 
version that we emphasise in visitation evangelism 
is the type that Jesus emphasised. 

All that we require is that the person, after thor- 
ough and careful description of what it means to 
be a follower of Jesus, consent to be a disciple. We 
ask each person if he is willing to receive Jesus 
Christ as Saviour and to confess Him as his Lord 
and Master; if he is willing to receive and profess 
the Christian faith as taught in the New Testament 
of our Lord Jesus Christ; if he will be loyal to the 
Church and uphold it by his prayers, his presence, 
his gifts, and his service. If he can answer these 
questions in the affirmative then we have him sign 
the following statement : 

I accept Jesus Christ as my personal 
Saviour, and purpose with His help to live 
a Christian life and do all I can to carry 
out His entire program. I desire to unite 
with the church of my choice and plan to 
present myself for membership one Sun- 
day removed from the date of this 
conversation. 

Dr. Herbert Scott, Pastor of First Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Des Moines, Iowa, said at the 


CONVERSION AND EVANGELISM 95 


Des Moines Annual Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, September 19, 1924, before a 
great gathering of ministers and laymen, “ Do you 
ask me if the people are converted when this method 
is used? I will answer you as Dr. Charles L. 
Goodell answered the same question once: “I do 
not know :—but they are showing the fruits of the 
Christian life.’ This is really a pragmatic test. It 
is the only test that I care anything about.” 


XI 
THE REACTION OF THE WORKERS 


F there were no other result from a Visitation 
Evangelism campaign than the reaction upon 
the workers, every church in the world would 

be justified in undertaking such an enterprise. 
Laymen grow spiritually in this work. 

There are three discoveries that a layman makes 
in this work. First, he discovers himself. There 
are comparatively very few people who live their 
own lives. Most people live as they do because of 
sectarianism, partisanship, and custom. Only now 
and then do we find a person who has courage 
enough to discover what he has that is peculiar to 
his own personality and then contribute that with 
. a beautiful self-abandon to some high and holy 
end. This is true in all walks of life. It is true 
in religion. The man who engages in visitation 
evangelism goes out into the community with the 
realisation that his success depends entirely upon 
himself and his Christ. When he sits down to talk 
with some neighbour he realises that the issue of 
that conversation depends, to a large extent, upon 
whatever persuasive abilities he may have to place 
at the disposal of the Holy Spirit in that interview. 


96 


THE REACTION OF THE WORKERS 97 


Straightway he is driven back upon his own re- 
sources. Very soon he discovers that he has per- 
suasive abilities in this work that he never dreamed 
he possessed. He has always had an ambition to 
win somebody to the Christian life. His ambition 
has been realised. He comes back to church with a 
yearning for further conquests, a contagious antici- 
pation of success, and a modest self-confidence 
which makes him very much like Jesus. Every 
campaign of this kind leaves in the church a num- 
ber of laymen who have been transformed in the 
midst of their work. 

In the second place, he discovers opportunity for 
service that he knew nothing about. As a matter 
of fact, the only way for a church to know its 
community is to know it through the home. The 
only way to know what people are aspiring to, what 
weights of discouragement and sorrow they have 
holding their spirits down, and the spontaneous 
response there is to a spiritual challenge everywhere 
—is to talk to them in the intimacy of their homes. 

I arrived very early one Sunday morning in the 
city of St. Albans, Vermont. I took my bags to 
the Inn. I was very tired and nervous. It oc- 
curred to me that a little walk out in the fresh air 
of the morning would do me good. 1 went out, 
walked past a row of public buildings on one side 
of the Park, up Main Street, then up Congress 
Street, passed the parsonage, came back to the Inn, 
and sat down for a few moments. Then I got up 


98 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


and went out and walked again. I saw a few 
people going to the Roman Catholic Church, a few. 
others going out to play golf. I came back, sat 
down and said to myself, “I have seen St. Albans.’ 
I had seen it just as many others have—the outside 
of the public buildings, the outside of the resi- 
dences, the outside of the stores, and a few citizens. 

I stayed there until Friday midnight. I saw a 
dying man pleading with his pastor to be baptised 
and received into the Church on his death-bed. I 
saw his family going about with tears in their eyes 
and emulating his example of Christian decision. 
I met a young lady who told me that she had 
always dreamed of serving God in some foreign 
country. She was not even a member of the 
Church. She made her Christian decision and we 
made some suggestions that perhaps will ultimately 
bring her to the goal of her ambition. I saw a boy 
who had the light of that divine dream in his eye 
which has led so many young men to become 
Christian ministers. We assisted in starting some 
communications with Boston University, which 
probably resulted in his matriculation there. I saw 
one hundred and three people become Christian dis- 
ciples. I visited numerous homes where men who 
had been out on strike a few months before had 
scarcely enough money to provide food for the 
family. I told them that some day the spirit of 
Jesus would be so applied in industry that warfare 
between employer and employee would cease, and 


THE REACTION OF THE WORKERS 99 


that their families would have a better chance. I 
tried to interpret Jesus’ will toward employees. 
They responded in a wonderful manner. I might 
make the story longer, but you know it all now. 
When I went down and boarded the midnight train 
from Montreal to Boston and was quite by myself 
in the train, I said, “I have really seen St. Albans. 
I have seen the people where they dream and where 
they die; I have seen them where they live and 
where they love.” I had seen the youth of the town 
fairly climb toward every altruistic challenge flung 
out before them in the name and in the spirit of 
Jesus. If the Church wants to keep her heart 
tender towards the needs of the world then the 
laity must visit in the homes. 

The third discovery that a worker makes in this 
work is a new Christ. If we were to take the con- 
ception that we sometimes have of Jesus and stand 
it up along the side of our Saviour, we would cover 
our faces with shame. We have kept Jesus’ quar- 
ters altogether too narrow. If a person is to have 
a robust, conquering Christ, he must see Him out 
in the community where the biggest things of the 
Kingdom of God must be done. When one sees 
Jesus conquer a man who has been selling himself 
for greed, and transform him into an obedient, 
sympathetic, Christian gentleman; then his con- 
ception of Jesus grows. When the worker sees 
Jesus draw a youth into the divine romance of 
an extraordinary spiritual goal; then his concep- 


100 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


tion of Jesus assumes more appropriate propor- 
tions. When he sees Jesus redeem someone who 
is badly lost, then his conception of Jesus is magni- 
fied and his confidence in Him is secure. ‘These 
are the priceless reactions that come in the mind 
and the heart of any person who sincerely and 
enthusiastically enters into the work of visitation 
evangelism. 


XII 


ASSOCIATIONS FORMED DURING A 
VISITATION EVANGELISM 
CAMPAIGN 


NE of the serious problems before the 
Church is how to keep people who have 
already made their confession of faith in- 

terested and active. With the exception of a few 
fortunate churches, the pastor has had this task to 
do all alone. I am not overlooking the fact that 
the various organisations of the church render 
good service here, but I am pointing out the fact 
that about fifty per cent. of the people who are 
members of the church are not found in the services 
of worship. Quite naturally any pastor who an- 
ticipates an ingathering of any kind, seriously con- 
siders the danger of losing a large proportion of 
those who become members of the church. 

There are several reasons why there has been 
such a terrible leakage in the past. One is that 
the people brought into the church were brought 
in almost entirely because of the work of a pastor 
or of an evangelist. If an evangelist had done the 
work, then, when he left the community, the person 
passed out of its life who above all others was 


101 


102 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


closely joined to it by tender and beautiful associ- 
ations established in the winning of its members 
to Christ. If the pastor had done the work, then 
he had scores of people dependent on him for the 
help that can come in its best ‘form only from the 
one who was responsible for their conversion. 
Another reason for this loss of interest and discon- 
tinuance of church attendance, is the fact that the 
people who had had no particular part in their 
coming into the church often did not know them, 
and consequently, though they were ever so gra- 
cious, could not give them the warmth that is 
necessary for growth. 

Another cause of this falling away from the 
church after the first step had been taken, is lack 
of training. Oftentimes no definition is given to 
a new member of his responsibility as a Christian. 
Of course, if most of the people in the church are 
failing to make the biggest religious urge practical 
in actual work in the community, then it is quite 
difficult for the minister, or anybody else, to in- 
struct these people. The chill of the infidelity of 
those who belong is too much of a handicap. It 
doesn’t make any difference how warm the weather 
is during the day, if a killing frost bites the flower 
at night. So itis in the church. The minister may 
radiate a boundless amount of spiritual warmth 
and energy, but he cannot keep the chill of indiffer- 
ence away from the new members. 

Probably one of the most wonderful features of 


ASSOCIATIONS FORMED 103 


this new method is that all three of these causes of 
leakage in church membership and spiritual interest 
are stopped, to a surprisingly large degree, by the 
very nature of the work itself. There is all the 
. difference in the world in the permanency of evan-. 
gelistic results in the work done by the pastor or 
evangelist alone, and the work done by the pastor 
and his laymen. The laymen, in the very process 
of winning their friends and neighbours to Christ, 
raise up associations between themselves and those 
won that go on for ever and ever. The people who 
have been won to this new relationship are now not 
only held to the church by their loyalty to Christ, 
but they are held to the church by a multitude of 
heart-ties. The layman who sits down with his 
neighbour and pleads with him, and then prays with 
him, and sees the transformation that comes when 
his neighbour accepts the new life, has formed a 
relationship that assists the neighbour in feeling 
absolutely at home in his friend’s church, precludes 
any possibility of indifference upon the part of the 
neighbour toward the assimilation and establish- 
ment of his neighbour in the life of the church, and 
becomes most convincing in teaching the new mem- 
bers. Now a minister does not define the Chris- 
tian life by his teachings alone; but the members 
of his church define the Christian life in the most 
eloquent way possible—they live that definition. 
This is the right kind of an environment in which 
to train new converts. God help our churches to 


104 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


realise more and more that they cannot import a 
revival: it must come up out of the hearts of the 
members. ‘That is God’s way of sending it down 
into a community. 

After a campaign at Marshalltown, Iowa, the 
pastor made elaborate arrangements for the recep- 
tion of two hundred and twenty-seven members 
into the Methodist Episcopal Church. ‘There is a 
side entrance to his church which is used as the 
main entrance to the auditorium. He reserved the 
center section of pews the full length of the church 
for those who were to be received into membership 
that day. From this side door to the center sec- 
tion, he arranged the visitors in two lines. It was 
necessary for those who were to be seated in the 
center section to go between these two rows of 
workers to their seats. The pastor told me that 
he would remember that scene for ever. There a 
man would be going to his reserved seat and one 
of the workers would step forward and grip him 
by the hand and look into his face as he greeted 
him. He had won that man ‘to his Christian de- 
cision. Here would come a woman. One of the 
ladies in the row would step forward,.put her arm 
about the lady, and embrace her. She had won 
that woman to an acquaintanceship with Christ as 
her Saviour. 

I am sure that it is all very plain and clear. Let 
us get rid of the heresy, quite widely accepted, that 
the minister is the only one who can explain what 


ASSOCIATIONS FORMED 105 


it means to become a Christian. This is a harmful 
and false impression. 

When one of these visitation campaigns closes, 
‘the church has an ideal situation so far as the 
assimilation of these new members into the body 
and spirit of the church is concerned. How easy 
it is to say to the people who have been doing the 
work, “I want you to become responsible for these 
new members, assigning one or more of them to 
each one of the workers. Get them into the various 
organisations of the church; see that they come to 
the weekly devotional meetings and get into the 
various classes. In other words, you are to take 
care of the establishment of these people in the 
church and the Christian life.” 


XII 
WHAT THE CHURCH DISCOVERS 


church makes a number of significant dis- 

coveries in visitation evangelism. These 

discoveries tend to inspire the pastor, define 

the task of the church and bring in the Kingdom of 
God much more rapidly. 

1. A church discovers a larger constituency than 
the members thought they had. We find that while 
the pastor of a church of a thousand members 
would estimate that he had six hundred in the 
community for whom his church was responsible 
outside of its membership, he is more likely to find 
that he has fifteen hundred or two thousand. 
There is always a tendency upon a part of the 
members of the church to underestimate their con- 
stituency. The only proper way to know actually 
how many people there are in any community for 
whom a church is responsible, is to take a religious 
census or survey of that community. ‘This should — 
be repeated every other year, or better, every year, 
in a community of any considerable size. 

2. A church discovers many people who are 
ready to make a Christian decision. Some of these 
people are not suspected by anyone in the church 


106 


WHAT THE CHURCH DISCOVERS 107 


to be particularly interested in religion. The first 
call that I made, after launching a campaign in 
Chicago, was upon a family about four blocks from 
a certain church. The mother and her two little 
twin girls were at home. After I had visited with 
the mother for a few moments, she commenced to 
weep. I asked her what was troubling her and she 
said, “ Well, you know, Mr. Kernahan, when I was 
a little girl I lived in this community and attended 
this church. I sang in the choir for years. Then I 
married and moved to the other side of the city. 
We came back into this section seven years ago. I 
have worked for six years to get my husband to 
go toa Men’s Bible Class. He has promised me to 
go next Sunday.” 

I visited further with the lady, led her to make 
her Christian decision, made arrangements for the 
baptism of the little girls, and just as I was about 
to leave, I said, “‘ Mrs. R., I want to come and see 
your husband tonight.” 

“No, please don’t,” she said. ‘‘ He is very set 
in his way, and if you come back, he will probably 
refuse to go to the Bible Class next Sunday.” 

“Just trust me now,’ I replied. “If I do not 
win your husband to an acquaintanceship with 
Christ as his Saviour, I will not offend him.” 
After a good deal of persuasion she consented to 
allow me to come back that evening. ‘The little 
girls had been listening carefully and they added 
their sweet little invitations to me to come back. 


108 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


I told Mrs. R. not to say anything about my 
coming. 

The first thing after supper that evening I 
hurried over to the R. home. She had evi- 
dently forgotten her promise, for Mr. R. was sit- 
ting in the parlour all dressed up, ready to receive - 
his caller. After visiting with him for a few mo- 
ments and attracting the attention of the little girls, 
I began to make my appeal, with the little girls 
standing by my side. 

“Dad,” I said to him, “you don’t want these 
little girls to be dedicated in Christian baptism while 
you remain apart from the church. There isn’t 
anything in the world that you would not do to 
secure the moral and spiritual future of these little 
girls. You wouldn’t refuse your wife the joy of 
having you by her side when she becomes a mem- 
ber of the church. Now, Mr. R., your wife is 
ready to make her confession of faith at the church 
altar and to have the little girls baptised. Are you 
not ready to be a Christian father, to walk in this 
new experience with your wife, to give your little 
girls your example?” 

This man, whom his wife was even fearful to 
have me meet, took me by the hand, and giving me 
a hearty handshake said, “ There isn’t anything on 
earth that could keep me away from that church 
when my wife and girls go to the altar.” Now, 
you see, he was all ready, and yet his wife had been 
talking to him for six years, trying to get him to 


WHAT THE CHURCH DISCOVERS 109 


go to a Bible Class. If we do less talking about 
church attendance to those who are not Christians, 
and more pleading for Christian decision, we would 
get further toward both goals. 

3. A church discovers that her greatest power 
resides in the laity, that it is not necessary to bring 
in some professional evangelist ; but that somebody 
who has been trained in inspiring the laity to do in 
a far more efficient manner what the professional 
evangelist used to do, will be of more lasting value. 
Dean Brown once said that there are three out- 
standing periods in Church history—the period of 
the martyr, the period of the monk, and the period 
of the Methodist, and they are everyone character- 
ised by outstanding lay activity. Whenever a 
church makes progress, her interest must be car- 
ried forward in the minds and the hearts of the 
laity. It is not possible in one volume, or many, to 
describe the perfectly amazing results of the work 
of the laymen in the field of evangelism. ‘There 
are multitudes of relationships and associations 
between the workers of the church and the people 
who are outside of the church, which may be capi- 
talised in the work of evangelism. Laymen can 
talk in a much more intimate manner to their 
friends than to anyone else. 

4. A church discovers that there is no bad after- 
math when it engages in this method of evangel- 
ism. There has been nothing spectacular or 
sensational; there have been ne bizarre headlines 


110 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


in the newspapers. ‘Those who are deep in sin have 
been approached in the spirit of Jesus. Invectives 
have not been hurled promiscuously from the pul- 
pit. Conviction has not been preceded by anger. 
The motto has been: “ Win a man, or'leave him 
more friendly toward the Church than you found 
him.” If you discover that you cannot win him 
gracefully, retreat, and leave him as open to an 
appeal as he was when you found him. The pub- 
licity in the campaign has been pretty much this 
type: Mrs. Grey has told Mrs. Brown across the 
lawn that the whole Martin family have made their 
decisions to come into the church a week from 
Sunday. This type of publicity has not built up 
antagonism and crystallised resistance. It has had 
a tendency to break down opposition and to mellow 
the whole field for evangelistic endeavour in the 
community. The visitors have become more en- 
thusiastic as the days have passed. They come to 
the pastor during the last few days of work and 
say, ‘Do we need to discontinue this work Friday 
night? Can we not continue it longer? We are 
tired, but when we get a little bit rested, we would 
like to go on.” 

And this interest becomes cumulative. Perhaps 
two hundred have been won in a quiet, sincere, en- 
thusiastic, loving way. ‘These two hundred have © 
a multitude of relationships. They become inter- 
ested in their relatives and friends and are willing 
to go with the workers to visit them, and to use 


WHAT THE CHURCH DISCOVERS 111 


their influence to persuade them to become Chris- 
tians. The weeks following a campaign of this sort 
are filled with spiritual romance. New families are 
always being discovered, further Christian deci- 
‘sions secured, until it seems that the field becomes 
more fertile for cultivation and production than it 
was before the campaign was launched. This is the 
ideal situation that the Church has always dreamed 
about, but was never able to realise before this 
method of evangelism was discovered. 

5. A church finds that she has too big a task to 
perform to spend any time in narrow sectarianism. 
As the visitors go to work day after day, they find 
that their appeal: has an appealing sincerity when 
they tell the folks upon whom they call that they 
have not come to ask them to be Methodist, or 
Episcopal, or Lutheran, or Congregationalist, or 
Presbyterian, or Baptist; but that they have come 
to invite them to become Christians and join the 
church they prefer. The denomination is quite im- 
material. It doesn’t make any particular difference 
what church a person belongs to, but it makes all 
the difference in the world whether a person accepts 
Jesus Christ as his leader, his Saviour, and his com- 
panion, and then becomes an efficient worker in 
some branch of Christ’s Church. Every campaign 
that I have directed in two years of work has won 
people to churches that were not participating in 
the campaign and sent them to those churches to 
confess their faith in Christ and become active 


112 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


members of that church. In a city-wide Methodist 
campaign in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, we sent 
more than one hundred people who had accepted 
Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour, to other 
churches. This has the most wholesome effect 
upon all of the churches, bringing them to a realisa- 
tion that the task of winning a city for God is a 
common responsibility and that a man who accepts 
Christ, is a gain to every church. I have reached 
the point in my own thinking upon this matter 
where I frankly say, that I do not believe that any 
denomination should launch a campaign of this 
nature in a community, without first inviting the 
co-operation of every church in that community. 

6. A church discovers that we have come to a 
period in Christian history when people are not at 
all interested in dogmatism. One of the tragedies 
of the Christian Church occurred when the leaders 
got all confused in a discussion of speculative ques- 
tions during the first century of Church history. 
‘They commenced to fight back and forth and tried 
to tell all of the truth as they saw it in some par- 
ticular statement. They became dogmatic, and 
while they were fighting about the proper way to 
wall Christian truths up in language, fearing that 
truth cannot take care of itself, they lost the whole 
continent of Africa. Then more recently various 
groups formed sects who were more interested in 
their creeds than they were in the people who were 
to accept them; and the whole world was over- 


- WHAT THE CHURCH DISCOVERS 118 


whelmed by religious shibboleths. We will have 
none of that today. The thing that people are most 
interested in now is, what does Christianity do for 
life? What virtue is there in following Jesus 
' Christ as our standard-bearer? People are not par- 
ticularly interested. in what somebody said about 
Jesus five hundred years ago. ‘They are interested 
in what Jesus has to say to them today. 

Now, in this method, we do not go out to ask 
people if they will accept the teachings of the Scrip- 
ture as interpreted by the doctrine of some church. 
We go out to ask them if they will accept Jesus 
Christ as their Saviour. We do not ask them to 
have our experience. We ask them to look upon 
Jesus and have their own experience. As a matter 
of fact, any other demand would be unfair, and 
would lead to the worst kind of hypocrisy. We go 
out to talk about the personality and the Saviour- 
hood of Jesus. This kind of an approach immedi- 
ately wins the respect of the thoughtful people in 
the community. 

These are the discoveries that a church makes 
when sincerely, with all her heart, she arises from 
her pews and goes out into the community to apply 
the spiritual power which has been generated in 
her services of worship and teaching, to the task 
of winning men and women back to the Heavenly 
Father. 





IV 
GOD’S GREATEST HUMAN RESOURCE 





XIV 


PERSONALITY—GOD’S GREATEST 
RESOURCE IN CARRYING THE 
INVITATION 


ISHOP CHARLES E. LOCKE was right 
when he said, a person does not need to 
search long in God’s wonderful world be- 

fore he comes to the conclusion that when God 
wanted to make His greatest creation He did not 
make a towering mountain, a tumbling sea, a spark- 
ling jewel, a transcendent poem, a triumphant 
army—He made man; and the astonishing thing 
about this fact is that He made many of the tallest 
souls out of the humblest material. The greatest 
thing about man is his personality. The greatest 
resource that God has in this world is personality. 
Man has capitalised it in the commercial field with 
outstanding results. Teachers find it their biggest 
asset. Preachers succeed or fail just in proportion 
to the personality they possess, provided they are 
absolutely given up to their task. 

It is astonishing how susceptible the people in 
any community are to the Christian appeal when 
it is delivered by an earnest, sincere neighbour. 
The results in this sort of work are convincing 


117 


118 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


and emphatic. Suppose that out of the more than 
four million members in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, one hundred thousand are enlisted to do 
this work. In one week they would win one mil- 
lion four hundred thousand to Christian disciple- 
ship. This is not a dream. If, in winning ten 
thousand people, the workers of all ages and de- 
grees of ability averaged fourteen won per team 
each week of work, it is logical to conclude that an 
average of fourteen won per team is a correct 
estimate of future success. 

We do not need more preaching nearly so much 
as we need people who will apply the spirituality 
generated in our services of worship to the task of 
persuading friends to accept Jesus and His program 
of living. Our public services of worship should 
be for the inspiration, education, and culture of 
our people. Our evangelism should be done just 
as Jesus did it—by personal contact and interview. 


XV 
SOME SUGGESTIONS IN TECHNIQUE 


AM afraid that spiritual laziness accounts for 

more tragedies in any community than any 

brand of depravity. Jesus’ love for the world 
has been such a constant fountain of inspiration 
that some have been perfectly willing to use the 
“ overflow ” of His love in promoting small plans 
easily executed in the work of evangelism. We 
have failed to realise that if spiritual enterprises 
are to keep step with the advance made in other 
fields of thought and work in the world, it will be 
necessary to give proportionate attention to methods 
and organisation. 

I have no sympathy with the church cynic who 
criticises programs and methods. A man who or- 
ganises his spiritual work will do many times more 
the amount of good than the one who does not. 
Thousands and thousands of dollars are spent by 
every big concern on earth to train men of good 
personality to become salesmen. After they have 
once been trained, the tenure of the work with that 
concern depends entirely upon how much they sell. 
I have sometimes thought that it might be a good 
plan to place the same measure upon the work of a 


119 


\ 


120 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


pastor. You may say, “ Oh, no, there are so many 
other things that pastors do that you could not 
measure their success by the number of conver- 
sions.” My answer is that it does not make any 
difference how many other things a minister does. 
If he does not succeed in persuading some of those 
who are not now Christians to become disciples of 
Jesus, he has failed. It would be of inestimable 
value to the Christian churches if they were to give 
special attention to the study of the technique of 
presenting the Christian appeal face to face with 
those who are not now Christians. | 
I once heard Dr. George Elliott, Editor of The 
Methodist Review, say that “ one of the best proofs 
of the Divinity of the Church is the fact that there 
have been the least brains and money invested in it 
of any great institution on earth, and yet, here it is 
alive and doing business.” He indicates here that 
success and progress have been made in the Chris- 
tian Church in spite of her short-sighted, clumsy, 
bungling, unwise, inapt presentation of Jesus. 
What any ordinary group of workers can do 
after receiving a few simple instructions in the 
technique of this wonderful enterprise is simply 
overwhelming. Here is an instance: The day after 
I had launched a simultaneous campaign in Toledo 
and Tama, Iowa, a man whom the pastor, Dr. 
Dewitt Clinton, had enlisted as a visitor, whose 
ability in this work was absolutely unknown either 
to himself or anybody else, came and asked for the 


SOME SUGGESTIONS IN TECHNIQUE 121 


card of a certain man. The pastor scarcely knew 
whether to give it to him. Pastors had failed for 
over thirty years to win this particular man to a 
public confession of his faith in Jesus Christ. He 
had been attending the church for years and was 
' one of the most prosperous men in the community. 
Finally the pastor, rather reluctantly, gave this 
worker the card. He went to the man’s home and 
visited with him about their mutual friend, Jesus. — 
The result was that our friend then and there made 
his decision publicly to confess his faith in Christ 
and his loyalty to His Church. 

The day after we launched the campaign in 
Omaha, Nebraska, a team called upon a man whose 
office was situated in the second or third best office 
building in the city of Omaha. After they had 
visited a few minutes, they discovered the following 
facts: The man’s father was a Cumberland Presby- 
terian and had been a Sunday school superintendent 
for many years; his wife had been an active mem- 
ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church ever since 
he first met her; he had a boy eighteen years of age, 
who had gone away to school; he had lived in the 
city of Omaha nineteen years, and had gone to 
church three times during that period. You see, 
the workers had announced the purpose of their 
call, and then by direct and courteous questioning, 
they had gathered together this exceedingly valu- 
able data. 

One of the men acted as spokesman for the team 


122 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


from that point on. He said to the man, “ Do you 
mean to tell me that in all the lifetime of your boy, 
whom you say is eighteen years of age, you have 
gone to church but three’times? Do you mean to 
say a little baby came into your home and that you 
allowed him to grow day after day without giving 
any attention whatsoever to your own religious 
_ vitality? Don’t you know that the only God that 
a baby sees is the Heavenly Father that he discov- 
ers in the eyes of his mother and father? Can it be 
true that a little laddie used to trip along by your 
side and that you never led his little feet to the 
church and to the church school? Don’t you see 
that you have surrendered the most glorious privi- 
lege that God ever gives a man? You could have 
built into the religious background of your boy’s 
life a texture that would stand the strain of centu- 
ries. You could have given him an example of 
loyalty to the church and interest in spiritual nur- 
ture that would have become his most precious 
possession. Now your boy is gone. He probably 
never will be back again to stay permanently.” 
The man being interviewed first showed keen 
interest, then tremendous earnestness, finally a 
broken heart. Now, this man was important 
enough in the life of the city of Omaha to have 
his photograph carried upon the front page of the 
Omaha Bee in a series of articles entitled ‘“ Men 
That Are Making Omaha.” What had happened 
to him all at once so far as his religious interest 


SOME SUGGESTIONS IN TECHNIQUE 128 


was concerned? ‘Two men who had been told that 
to enter in upon the work of visitation evangelism, 
a man should apply the same spiritual and psycho- 
logical principles to the presentation of a Christian 
religion as he does in salesmanship in the work of 
- his everyday life. 

They were having an adventure in the field of 
Christian conquest, by applying the same brain and 
the same earnestness in the work of Christ as they 
used in their everyday secular life. The wonderful 
thing about this is, that men who are successful in 
meeting the public in their everyday contacts, are 
much more successful when they commence to talk 
about Jesus. There is a fragrance in His person- 
ality, a beauty in His enterprise, and a romance 
about His conquest that fill a man’s lips with elo- 
quence, his heart with a spontaneity of expression, 
and his hands with an artistry in spiritual activities 
which cannot be equaled in any other work on earth. 


XVI 


OBSERVATIONS WHILE WINNING TEN 
THOUSAND PEOPLE TO CHRISTIAN 
DISCIPLESHIP 


HE observations which have accumulated 
during the last few months of my work are 
of sufficient amount and cover an extensive 

enough field to furnish the basis for certain true 
conclusions. ‘here are quite a large number of 
conclusions coming out of this work which are of 
sufficient importance to occupy space here. 

1. There are no peculiar places. This method 
will work anywhere on earth. I have at hand a 
letter written by J. Harlow Graham, pastor of 
Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Norwich, 
Connecticut. He has gone through three visitation 
evangelism campaigns with me. One of them was 
conducted out in the country where there was no 
village whatsoever,—just a church. This was a 
decadent community in New England. It would 
not rank in its life or ability with most of the 
decadent communities in New England. Most of 
the people would say that there were scarcely any 
English-speaking inhabitants left—that practically 
all of the old farms had been taken over by Jewish 


124 


OBSERVATIONS WHILE WINNING 125 


and Polish people. It was quite interesting to just 
keep count of those who told that there were no 
English-speaking people left, and then total that 
number. We found, for instance, twenty-one boys 
and girls who were born in English-speaking homes 
in less than one mile. 

The second campaign was held in a downtown 
city church. The constituency was both industrial 
and business people. The third campaign was a 
city-wide project. In his letter, Rev. Mr. Graham 
says that six months afterward the results of the 
campaign were exactly the same. In other words, 
the proportion of people won to a Christian de- 
cision and membership per team was the same; 
that the permanency of the loyalty of those who 
were won was the same. We find that ninety-six 
per cent. of the people who are won to Christian 
decision by this method of visitation evangelism are 
in the churches giving attention to the religious life 
and bearing the fruits of a Christian citizen six 
months after the campaign. Here we have three 
distinct groups of people represented in three cam- 
paigns mentioned in this letter, and yet our results 
are identical. This has been my experience during 
the winning of ten thousand people. We have 
found that while communities differ in many re- 
spects, they do not differ in their response to an 
invitation given in love to accept and serve Jesus 
Christ. 

. 2, Any sincere worker can do this work. He 


126 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


does not need to be able to quote Scripture. He 
does not need to have an extensive religious back- 
ground of training and experience. He does not 
need to be educated in every instance. It is not 
necessary that he be accustomed to the work of 
meeting people in his everyday work. If you will 
recall the folks whom Jesus won, you will find sev- 
eral very distinct types of people. There was Peter, 
a man with natural eloquence; there was Mary 
Magdalene, a woman with a broken life; there was 
Zaccheus, a man hated because he was connected 
with the enemy government. 

3. If the minister makes an appeal to his people 
individually, he will get a larger number to do this 
work than he ever dreamed would consent to do it. 
He will get people to do this work who have not 
been in the limelight of the church’s life. Some 
who will be the most successful will be those whom 
he least expected to succeed. 

4. The pastor finds that the people who do the 
work clarify their own Christian faith. They are 
attempting to put into their own language a defini- 
tion of their Christian faith. They become definite, 
direct, and attractively confident. The mayor of 
St. Albans, Vermont, said with a good deal of feel- 
ing, “ Why, Mr. Kernahan, I could not do this; this 
is not in my line.” I encouraged him, pleaded with 
him to try it, hurried him out of the church to his 
task, and when he came in with his report, you 
would have thought that he had met Jesus down 


OBSERVATIONS WHILE WINNING 127 


the street in actual bodily form. “ You never could 
have convinced me that it was possible,’ he said, 
“but now I know. We won so-and-so to Christ 
tonight.” 

In Chicago a certain young lady promised to do 
this work because she did not want to disappoint 
her pastor. She was naturally very reticent. We 
sent her out with another young lady who was a 
bit more aggressive in temperament. I went in the 
other direction from that taken by this team of 
young ladies. About an hour and a half later I 
heard someone call about a half a block away, “ Oh, 
Mr. Kernahan!” I was surprised to hear anyone 
calling my name on the street, for I had been in the 
community but a few hours. I was doubly sur- 
prised to find that it was this reticent young lady. 
I do not know whether girls ever throw their hats 
in the air, but I would not have been surprised to 
have seen this girl throw her hat in the air as she 
called with the music of heaven in her voice, “‘ Oh, 
Mr. Kernahan, we have won four!” 

Oftentimes the person who is most sure that he 
cannot do this work becomes the most remarkable 
success in it because the timidity which causes him 
to hesitate to undertake it, gives him a beauty about 
his appeal which the over-confident cannot possess. 
This young lady in Chicago said afterward, “I did 
not know how I was going to be able to tell any- 
body else how to be a Christian. I have discovered 
that all I need to do is to talk about my friend and 


128 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Saviour, Jesus, just as I would about any other 
person, with the added realisation that He can be 
a greater help and blessing to the person I am talk- 
_ ing to than anyone else on earth.” 

5. The worker oftentimes can win people to a 
Christian decision whom the pastor cannot win. 
At the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Sioux 
City, Iowa, the pastor made this remark at the con- 
clusion of a campaign: “ One of the most remark- 
able features about this work is the fact that 1 have 
tried to win fully sixty per cent. of these people 
who have been won by my workers, and I failed.” 
He was simply expressing what every pastor with 
whom I have worked has discovered. 

6. Many men and women can be won who have 
passed through scores of revival meetings without 
making their decisions. In the city of Des Moines, 
Iowa, we won a man past ninety years of age who 
had been active in the business life of the city. “I 
have always believed in Christ,” he said. “1 think 
that this world would be hopeless without Him. I 
wondered if there was not some way whereby I 
could talk this thing through and make my decision 
in my home where I make most of my decisions. 
You may tell the pastor that I will be at church a 
week from Sunday morning to make my confession 
of faith. I am sorry that someone did not come to 
me in this fashion seventy years ago or more. My 
decision then would have been exactly the same as 
it is now.” His type is legion. 


OBSERVATIONS WHILE WINNING 129 


7. Another observation is that there are thou- 
sands and thousands of people who have been 
touched by the teaching and preaching ministry of 
the church, who have never been asked to make a 
definite Christian decision to become members of 
the church. In one of the Eastern cities, I caHed 
one afternoon upon the leading citizen in the com- 
munity. My team-mate was a judge of distinction 
and ability. This man had been in politics for over 
forty years. He had always had a more or less 
definite relationship with one of the churches. We 
finally persuaded him to accept Jesus Christ as his 
Saviour and to become an active Christian worker 
in the community. He told us that while he had 
been in politics for forty years and had been ap- 
proached by the men of the community upon almost 
every matter of civic interest and social welfare, he 
had never been asked in his life to make a decision 
for Christ, confess his faith, and join the Church. 

8. Perhaps one of the most interesting observa- 
tions that we have made in this work is that there 
are very few people outside of the Church who reai- 
ise that, if they believe in Jesus Christ as the Sav- 
iour of the world, the confession of that faith and 
relationship in the church is an inevitable responsi- 
bility. Our message in the past has had so much 
to do with the individual emphasis that there are 
very few who realise at all that there is such a thing 
as social responsibility. They have been led to 
believe by long years of preaching that whether 


. 


130 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


they chose to be active members in the Christian 
Church was entirely an optional matter; while as a 
matter of fact, if we study the progress of the 
human race, we know that anyone who starts out 
with the belief that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of 
the world, must espouse His cause and invest his 
personality in the Christian Church. History is a 
series of reforms written in the blood of those who 
have given themselves to Christ’s Church. If I 
accept Christ as the Saviour of the world, then to 
be consistent I must assist Him to become the Sav- 
iour of my community. 

I visited a judge in a Middle Western city one 
day, and after a few moments of pleasant conver- 
sation about the religious background of his boy- 
hood, he said, “I do not know what I would give 
for the blessings that have been given me because 
of the religious life of my parents.” 

“Then,” I said to him, “ of course, you will pass 
those same blessings on to posterity by giving your 
life to the promotion of the religious interests of 
the community.” 

“ Oh, I believe in the Christian life,” he replied, 
“ and we want the churches, but whether I become 
a member of the church or not, is quite immaterial.” 

“ Judge,” I answered, “ you would punish a man 
for that kind of an argument in your court proced- 
ure. You expect every man who is brought before 
you to return just compensation for every service 
rendered him. Now, we cannot make that analogy 


OBSERVATIONS WHILE WINNING $1381 


go down on all fours, but this one thing is the same 
in each instance. You likewise will expect to com- 
pensate the church and Christian environment for 
what they have given you. If the matter of your 
church membership is immaterial, then the member- 
ship of every other person is immaterial; and if 
we all considered church membership immaterial, 
there would be no Church. The only thing in this 
wide world that will perpetuate a Christian Church 
is the gift of sincere lives.” 

“T never thought of it from that standpoint 
before,” said the judge. “TI believe you are cor- 
rect. I am determined to serve Jesus Christ in the 
way you suggest. I will be present a week from 
Sunday morning to make my confession of faith 
and be received into the church.” 

9. I have observed that we have raised a partition 
between our expressions of religious devotion and 
our civic life. We have actually talked so much 
about separation of State and Church that we have 
not only accomplished in our minds the organic 
separation which is good, but the spiritual separa- 
tion which is bad. I have found a large number of 
men who were responsible for the political program 
of the civic life of the community who say that 
good people are quite vociferous in demanding cer- 
tain types of government and reform, but fail to 
function in a practical manner when it comes to 
supporting any program of this nature which they 
might desire to put over. We won the mayors of 


, 


132 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


four different cities in four successive campaigns. 
They all said that now they had taken their stand 
for Christ in the Church, they were going to use 
their influence in arousing the Church to the neces- 
city of getting behind and staying behind every 
good man who entered politics. 

These conclusions have been drawn after careful 
tabulations of innumerable interviews with men and 
women about Christian decision and Christian 
citizenship. 


V 


THE EVANGELISM OF THE CHANGE- 
LESS CHRIST 


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XVII 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST AND 
EVANGELISM 


HANGEH is written in large letters across the 
face of the universe. We find it where we 
least expect to find it. I am told by scien- 

tists that if you take a bar of steel and a bar of 
brass and place them very close together and leave 
them for a considerable length of time, and then 
analyse them, you will find molecules of the steel 
bar in the brass, and molecules of the brass bar in 
the steel. Consequently, the only conclusion you 
can come to is that these two hard metals are in 
constant change and motion. We speak of the 
everlasting mountains, yet they are being constantly 
smoothed upon the top by the play of the elements 
and tunneled beneath by the genius of man’s hand. 
Change is everywhere. I have seen it ingrained 
upon the peaks of the mountains, and crocheted 
upon the profiles of the hills by great railroad 
trunk lines. 

When I was a boy, I had the privilege of hearing 
one of those unusual speakers who was able to take 
all of the experiences of the people who sat before 
him and make them preach marvelous sermons. 


135 


136 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Later, he was elected a Bishop in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church and was retired at their General 
Conference held in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 
May, 1924. I am speaking of William A. Quayle. 
His address that day made a lasting impression 
upon me. His language was so homely and his 
delivery so unique that one of the paragraphs of 
that address still stays in my memory. It was not 
a definition of change but a description of change 
given in his poetic manner. Here it is: “ You re- 
member a schoolhouse where the world was at its 
widest ; the fishing stream; the swimming pool; the 
scramble up the bank with bruised feet; the spring 
at which you used to recline and drink and drink 
and drink and drink and yet you were never satis- 
fed; the spankings wherewith your relatives re- 
galed you that you never got one too many; the 
chores; the Saturdays; the first indications of 
Spring; the stopping amid fields to see the sullen 
splendour of a cloud burned low like a great ship 
in conflagration.” These things he said were the 
commonplace things of the past. The humdrums 
and stupidities of life. They were the hardy 
makers of our souls, but they were gone, never 
to return. 

Scientific theories change. JI remember that, 
when at college, we had a certain scientific theory 
which was at the basis of our investigation in a 
certain department of chemistry. We supposed 
that that theory was as changeless as the laws of 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 137 


the Medes and the Persians. We even referred to 
‘itasalaw. I had not been graduated from college 
long, however, when I was informed that that 
theory had proven false and that all future experi- 
ments in that department of chemistry would be 
based upon a new theory. 

Forms of government change. There has been 
a constant succession in changes of government 
from the old Patriarchal down to the Presidential— 
the best form of government God ever smiled upon. 
I cannot mention governments any more without 
digressing long enough to say that I am fearful 
that there are many people in the United States of 
America who have no idea of the cost of this gov- 
ernment. It has evolved through agony and blood- 
shed which no tongue or pen will ever be able to 
describe adequately, but it has come to us through 
a series of changes. 

We change ourselves. Some of the things we 
used to love, we hate; and some of the things we 
used to hate, we love. Our old homesteads change. 
A few years ago I was discharged from the Army 
at Camp Dix, New Jersey. I started off across the 
long miles to my native home in the Middle West. 
I had no more than taken my seat in the Pullman 
car and the locomotive had started, when the wheels 
commenced to sing songs of other days. Now, a 
young person may not understand this, but anyone 
who is older, who has sat a long distance from some 
fond destination and has allowed the memories of 


138 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


yesterday to come trooping back through his mind, 
has observed that any rhythm will take upon itself 
the clothing of words, and straightway come songs 
of yesterday. As I sat in the car through the first 
day and attempted to sleep during the first night, 
the old car wheels went on singing their songs. I 
could again see my boyhood home out there in the 
country eight miles from Oelwein, Iowa. I could 
see the little dining room where mother would 
spend the long winter evenings, and there were my 
brothers and sisters, George, Julius, Mae, and Belle. 
I heard the old stories again that Mother used to 
tell, stories about the early hardships of the Middle 
West; and about a trip across from South Dakota 
to Iowa ina prairie schooner. There in my mind’s 
vision was the old home, just as it used to be. Of 
course I knew that it had changed, but I was in one 
of the moods in which a man is easily deceived if 
he be not careful to check up upon the natural read- 
justments which have come to him. When [I ar- 
rived in Iowa I found that old home all gone. 
One sister had been called long ago to a home that 
was far superior to anything we could provide for 
her, and we soon ceased to complain. My brother 
had been burned to death during the war. Another 
sister was living in a home upon the Pacific Coast, 
another brother in a new home in the Middle West, 
Mother in another home, and I on the Atlantic 
Coast. ‘The old home was absolutely gone—never 
to return. 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 139 


I believe that I understand human nature some- 
what, and I am surely telling the truth, when I say 
that in the midst of this change, transition and 
chaos, the deepest instinct of the human soul is to 
reach up and get hold of something that does not 
change, preferably a personality. ‘There has been 
but one system of thought, philosophy, or religion 
that has ever presented a person who has been 
eternally changeless in the qualities that make him 
like God. ‘There has been but one Person who, 
irrefutably, has declared Himself, through the 
centuries, to be changeless in the virtues that make 
Him stand out like a giant mountain in a mountain 
range. I am speaking of Jesus. 

If I were to do the next logical thing in the pur- 
suance of this thought, I would attempt to prove 
that Jesus is changeless. I am not going to do the 
logical thing. I ask you to consider a more funda- 
mental question. The question is not as to the 
changelessness of Jesus, but concerning Jesus Him- 
self. If the reader happens to have been trained in 
the same kind of school as I was, please be patient. 
If you feel that we have no right to enter upon this 
ground, I beseech you to consider the thousands and 
thousands of young men and young women in our 
high schools and colleges who are more interested 
in this question than in any other consideration that 
has to do with religion. Down there in those years 
of natural doubt and necessary readjustments, they 
are looking toward us. and asking “ Who is Jesus 


140 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


and what is Jesus?” What do we usually do when 
one from this group, or perchance someone from 
an older group, asks this question? We usually do 
nothing, and when we realise that there are hun- 
dreds who are thinking it but do not ask it, then 
the seriousness of this situation dawns upon us. I 
say, we usually do not do anything. It has been my 
experience that only one person in fifty ever talks 
about Jesus in his regular everyday life in a con- 
tagious manner. ‘These people are trying to dis- 
cover by our conversation whether we actually 
think that Jesus is real. We remain silent. 

There is at least one reason for this silence. 
Here it is: We look into the face of Jesus and we 
see a beauty there that cannot be comprehended 
within a sentence, a paragraph, or a book; and we 
say, “ Who can define Jesus in absolute terms?” 
We look into His personality, and we see a power 
there that has transformed the thought of the ages, 
renovated the social life of millions of people, 
changed customs and let in the sunlight of a whole- 
some philosophy of life which has already started 
to set up the Kingdom of God on earth. We say 
it is impossible to define Jesus in absolute terms. 
Here is the fallacy. Just because we discover that 
we cannot define Jesus in absolute terms, we should 
not cease to talk about Him. As a matter of fact, 
we cannot define anything that has life in it in 
absolute terms. Religious creeds are very helpful, 
but they are never absolutely true. That is the 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 141 


wonder about Jesus. That is the romance in Chris- 
tianity; for Christianity is life, not creed. We do 
-not insist upon defining many things in terse and 
explicit sentences which we talk about in a per- 
suasive and contagious way. 

Think, for instance, of four of our indispensable 
possessions. What is beauty? I was at one time 
pastor of First Methodist Episcopal Church, North- 
ampton, Massachusetts. There is a wonderful old 
street in that city called Elm Street. It is skirted 
on either side by giant trees. They are so large and 
so old that it is necessary to put bands of steel 
around some of them to keep the limbs from break- 
ing down. On my way to the church every Sun- 
day morning, I walked beneath the spreading limbs 
of these old trees. I was always in a tender mood 
to catch any suggestion that might make me a bet- 
ter preacher that morning, and many times, in fact 
I think always, I would look out between these 
limbs over the steeple of my church located on the 
corner of Smith College Campus, and see in the 
distance a little mountain. They called it Mount 
Tom. I would say to myself, “ Isn’t the mountain 
majestic this morning, holding its head up high in 
the heavens, worshipping God? Isn’t the mountain 
beautiful? ” 

Later, I was pastor of a church in Boston, Mas- 
sachusetts. Just to the right of the pulpit stood the 
erect, superb figure of Jesus. Now 1 knew that 
that picture worked into a stained glass window 


142 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


was the result of the best dreams of an artist. I 
do not know just how much that picture looked like 
Jesus when He was upon earth. I think, however, 
that the artist must have seen Jesus some sunlit 
morning, for there was a beauty upon that face 
that was matchless. 

One day I was out in the middle of the ocean, 
upon the largest passenger ship owned by France. 
I was sitting far out at the stern and I saw a storm 
come staggering across the sea. One of the biggest 
dreams that I had as a boy and a young man, was 
to see a storm at sea. ‘This may seem strange, for 
I was born and had lived nearly all my life in the 
Middle West. I was so green about the ocean that 
I felt like doing what a friend of mine said he felt 
like doing when he first saw the ocean. I wanted 
to get down on my knees and taste the water to see 
whether it had any salt in it. But here I was face 
to face with one of the big experiences that I had 
always yearned after. I almost tied myself aboard 
and stretched out over the stern to see the storm 
that came wading on with giant strides towards us. 
It was beautiful. ‘The heavens put on a mourning 
that I did not know even the fingers of God could 
weave and hang across the early day. The angry 
ocean churned up a thousand colours until, as you 
looked upon the crest of every wave, it seemed as 
though you were looking into a fairy park studded 
with myriads of jewels. 

I walked back into the middle of the ship and 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 143 


stood with thousands of men about me. They 
were crossing the sea to enter into another storm. 
‘They were dreaming about it. It was already 
raging in their hearts. The marks of it were upon 
their faces. ‘They were experiencing already the 
pain, hate, and mental anguish of the war. “ This 
is beautiful,’ I said, “the sky, the wind, the sea, 
the brain, and the heart of men all in a strain and 
strugegle.”’ 

Now, I have been talking about beauty. I think 
that I have been talking about it contagiously. I do 
not believe that anyone would doubt that I believe 
there is such a thing as beauty. But what is it? 
Somebody says it is a harmonious relationship of 
parts. That’s no definition. I have seen some 
girls who could arrange powder and hair very har- 
moniously, but there was no beauty there. What 
is poetry? Somebody says it is the voice of the 
soul, but that’s no definition. We have not yet 
been able to define the soul. What is the home? 
Somebody answers, “‘ Why, the home is four walls, 
the ceiling, the floor, and a man and woman who 
have been joined in the holy bonds of matrimony.” 
That’s not a definition. You present to me a man 
and woman who love each other and have been 
joined together in the holy bonds of matrimony, 
and you have a home without a house. Was it not 
Mark Hopkins who said, “‘ What is a college? A 
log with a professor at one end of it and a student 
at the other. That’s a college,” What is genius? 


144 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


Abraham Lincoln was a genius, but there have been 
scores of books written about Abraham Lincoln, 
and the one thing that they cannot explain is his 
genius. 

Do we cease to talk about these indispensable 
possessions of the human race? Do we refuse to 
accept their contributions to our lives? How about 
beauty? When I am in the midst of beauty, I 
drink it in; and that same beauty courses down 
through my personality and becomes a ministry to 
the folks. How about poetry? Just because I 
cannot tell you in explicit terms what poetry is, do 
I refuse to receive what it has to enrich my life? 
Is this poetry? 


“The American finds not in this wide world a 
pleasure so sweet 
As to sit at the window and tilt up his feet, 
And puff away at his Cuba whose flavour 
just suits, 
And gaze at the world ’twixt the toes of his 
boots.” : 


How about this? 


“He gathers our prayers as He stands, 
And they change into garlands in His hands, 
Into flowers of purple and red; 
And beneath the wide arch of the portal, 
Through the streets of the city immortal, 
Is wafted the fragrance they shed.” 


What is the difference between these two selec- 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 145 


tions? Ohne is poetry, the other is not. Now, just 
because I cannot define poetry in absolute terms, 
shall I deny to the mind of some unusual person 
the privilege of reaching up into the skies and 
gathering up the screech of the shells that went on 
their deathward march a few years ago, the cries 
of the men who burned to death up there; of reach- 
ing down into the bowels of the sea and gathering 
up the murmurs of the babies who drowned down 
there ; of reaching out over the blood-soaked battle- 
fields and gathering up the prayers and the profani- 
ties of the boys who fought over there; and mixing 
them all together in the magic of his personality, 
to pour out an epic into the minds and the hearts 
of the people? No, we will accept his songs, and 
some day, in the midst of depression, we will find 
that the songs we cannot define have become the 
means of our escape. 

Now, how about the home! Just because I can- 
not tell you what the home really is, shall I deny 
the arms of a woman the privilege of holding her 
offspring and breathing into his face the dreams 
of a hundred mornings? No, rather we shall say, 
“Go on. Make your contribution to the needs of 
this day, furnish God the first generation that ever 
anywhere nearly approximated Jesus’ ideal of world 
citizenship.” 

What shall we do about genius? We cannot 
define it, and yet this is the day of genius. One 
morning I was leaving a hotel to go to a pulpit 


146 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


where I was to preach. Just as I passed through 
the lobby, I heard a beautiful song somewhere. 
The clerk said, “‘ Sit down a moment.” I did, and 
for the next ten minutes I enjoyed a religious 
service. I said, “‘ Where is this service being 
held?” The clerk informed me that it was Omaha, 
Nebraska. I heard the people singing that beauti- 
ful old hymn, “ Who Could It Be But Jesus?” I 
heard the preacher pray, and as he became the 
mouthpiece of his congregation and prayed for the 
wide world that morning, I felt that genius was 
acquainting us, better than we had ever before real- 
ised, with our Heavenly Father. 

It is surely fair to suggest that we should take 
exactly the same attitude toward Jesus. Of course 
we cannot define Him. Words are too forced and 
rigid. Jesus cannot be tied down to this earth in 
the cold shackles of a definition, but we can talk 
about Him with a greater certainty and contagion 
than we can about beauty, poetry, home, or genius 
—and the consequences are more needful. 

I am not saying that we cannot have a practical 
definition of Jesus. May I suggest it in this way? 
Many of the so-called laws of nature were not dis- © 
covered until some men were willing to pay the 
price of incarnating them in their own being. Men 
died for centuries and passed by herbs that had 
‘medicinal properties in them that would have cured 
their diseases, until some doctors gave the health- 
giving properties contained in these herbs to the 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 147 


world. Men died upon ships and were buried in the 
sea, and all that was necessary for them to do was 
to speak through the proper kind of an instrument 
thousands of miles away to receive the aid which 
would have saved their lives. Then Edison com- 
menced to think, Marconi thought a bit further, 
and they gave to the world wireless telegraphy. A 
man named Newton observed an apple fall dc wn 
and he said, “ If the apple falls down instead ot up, 
there must be some reason.” He commenced to 
co-operate with God in his willingness to serve, 
and eventually discevered a certain law, and he 
gave it to the world as a law of gravitation. Just 
as Newton, Edison, Marconi, and others, are the 
‘incarnation of natural laws; so Jesus is the incar- 
nation of the love, of the will, and the purpose of 
God. ‘This makes our work simple. As we go out 
to talk about religion, we do not need to talk in 
abstractions or platitudes. We are to .talk about 
Jesus. He personifies the teachings of our Heav- 
enly Father. All we need to have is capacity for 
friendship and acquaintanceship with Jesus to be 
assured of success. Jesus dramatises in the most 
eloquent way all of the teachings of God to us. 

We have been thinking about Jesus, about the 
changeless Jesus. Let us talk about the three ways 
in which Jesus does not change. 

1. He does not change in His teachings. We 
change in our interpretations of His teachings, but 
when we fathom what He really taught in reference 


148 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


to any particular relationship of life or about life 
itself, we can be sure that these teachings will never 
change. I am glad that we do change in our in- 
terpretations of His teachings. We are more 
nearly approximating the truth as the years go by. 

I once boarded a train in a small city about three 
hundred miles from Chicago. After we had trav- 
elcd a few miles, I found that my seat companion 
was also a preacher. He was a minister of a de- 
nomination I am not acquainted with in any inti- 
mate way. I said to him, “This is a great privi- 
lege for me. I do not suppose in my whole life 
that I have had an opportunity to visit with a man 
of your denomination as long as I shall today, and 
if you do not mind, I would like to ask you one 
question about your Church. Do you still teach 
that if a baby dies who has not been baptised, he 
is lost?” 

He seemed rather reticent in answering. 

Then I asked him again, “ Does your Church 
still teach that if a baby dies without being bap- 
tised, he is lost?” 

“We have no right to teach that he is saved,” 
he said. 

“‘ Brother,” I replied, ‘ I am sure that I have the 
right to look into the face of any broken-hearted 
mother and tell her that when death breaks the little 
chubby arms away from her bosom, the baby spirit 
goes directly to the bosom of the Father, whether 
he has been baptised or not. That is the only en- 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 149 


vironment for a baby-spirit when he leaves the 
arms of his mother.” 

Now, the purpose of the story is this: There are 
many still living who remember when there were 
at least a half-dozen denominations or small 
branches of denominations that were teaching that 
babies who die without baptism are lost. I thank 
God that we do change in our interpretations of 
Jesus’ teachings. I could take you to a score of 
cemeteries today where little headstones stick them- 
selves up outside of the cemetery walls as monu- 
ments to this superstition. Thank God we are 
moving away from that, but Jesus remains ever 
the same in all of His teachings. When we change 
our teachings, we are simply getting nearer to Jesus. 

If you were converted, my reader, after you be- 
came adult, the first ambition that you had when 
you became acquainted with Jesus as your Saviour, 
was to go home or out in the community and win 
somebody else to Christ. He taught you in that 
first wonderful experience that it was possible for 
you to take enough of His beauty into your face, 
His winsomeness into your voice, and His passion- 
ate love into your heart to go out and win scores 
to a Christian discipleship. If He is not teaching 
you that today, you have lost your contact with 
your teacher. He will teach His loyal followers 
that, as long as there is one man upon earth who 
has not become His friend. ‘That is a sentimental 
teaching but absolutely fundamental to the redemp- 


150 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


tion of the world. Jesus has put this at the very 
basis of any evangelistic program. It was pre- 
requisite to His own success. It is likewise abso- 
lutely indispensable if the modern church is to 
make the advance that looks very possible. 

2. Jesus does not change in His attitude toward 
lost people. Do you remember what it was? ‘They 
brought before Him a woman that was taken in 
sin. Jesus stooped His face in modesty, the mod- 
esty of a Saviour. “If anyone of you men who 
brought this woman here is without sin,” He said, 
“you cast the first stone”; and, while He waited, 
He wrote some words in the sand, the only words 
we have any record of His writing. When He 
lifted His face He looked deep down into the heart 
of the woman and said, “ What, is there no man 
here to condemn you?’”—for the men had all 
slipped away. 

“No, Lord,” she answered, “there is no one 
here to condemn me.” . 

“ Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus said. “Go, 
and sin no more.”’ 

Christ’s attitude was that of a Saviour. As you 
read the records of His work, you will find that 
while He gave His attention, now and then, to con- 
demnation and judgment, most of His arduous 
days were spent in the work of a Saviour. May I 
emphasise just this one point? We slip altogether 
too easily into the attitude of judges. We see 
_ people who are bad and we judge them. Meanness 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 15t 


and sin should be rebuked, but people who are lost 
in the wild labyrinths of sinful habit need to be 
redeemed. We should make much greater progress 
if we were to take Jesus’ attitude and give our- 
selves to the business of assisting Him in His beau- 
tiful work of redeeming lost souls. People do not 
need to be judged half so much as they need to be. 
loved. People do not need to be criticised adversely 
nearly so much as they need to have Christian 
sympathy. People, bad people, lost people, will 
respond in an amazing percentage of instances to 
an appeal for clean Christian living when the appeal 
comes from the lips of one who has tasted the 
romance of that abundant life of which our 
Master spoke. 

Here is a modern illustration of Jesus’ attitude 
toward lost people. A special revival campaign 
was being held in one of the great Eastern cities. 
A girl who had come into the city, lost her way, 
married an infamous character, and had settled 
down under the eaves of one of the churches, 
became interested. She said to her husband, “ Let’s 
go to that meeting tonight.”” They had no sooner 
arrived when the speaker threw himself into a pas- 
sionate, eloquent portrayal of the Gospel message. 
These two people saw themselves in their hopeless 
besmirched condition. ‘They also saw Jesus in His 
immaculate whiteness. They heard the speaker say, 
“ You may be like Jesus if you will look to Him.” 
They made their decision that night to give them- 


152 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


selves to Christ and beg His forgiveness for 
the past. 

The next Sunday morning they attended the 
church near which they lived. The pastor that 
morning gave an invitation for all who had made 
Christian decisions to come forward and become 
members of the church. These two hesitated. 
They knew that the members of that community 
knew them as vicious people. 

During the week the pastor sent some proper 
workers to visit in this home. They talked with 
these people just as they believed Jesus would have, 
if He had been there. They used their person- 
alities for the wonderful work of carrying the 
spirit of Jesus into a lost home. They persuaded 
these two people to seek admission into the church 
the next Sunday morning. 

The pastor again gave the invitation and the two 
arose and started forward. People all over the 
church were attempting to see these infamous char- 
acters. The woman became very highly wrought 
up nervously. It looked as though she might even 
become hysterical. Another woman on the oppo- 
site side of the church saw the situation, and as the 
pastor left the pulpit to come down to the altar, 
this woman, highly educated, beautifully cultured, 
arose from her seat and came forward. She took 
her place by the side of the outcast woman. As the 
pastor came forward, the outcast woman gasped as 
though she would collapse in her nervousness. The 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 158 


beautiful woman stepped in front of her, put one 
hand upon one cheek and the other hand upon the 
other cheek, turned the face of the woman, kissed 
one cheek and then the other, and thereby reinstated 
her in decent society. 

This is an unusual illustration, you say? Yes, it 
is, and God forgive us! For it was just another 
instance of Jesus operating in the body of a highly 
educated, beautifully cultured woman. ‘The sooner 
we realise that for some reason, over nineteen hun- 
dred years ago, Jesus took off His body and that 
the only body that He has to use now, which can 
be seen by those whom we would win, is ours, the 
sooner the Kingdom of God will come upon earth. 
Your hands may become His hands, your face may 
smile down into sin and sorrow with the sympathy 
and love of Jesus. Your heart may become the 
dynamic which will change many sordid situations. 
This gives our work a dignity and a beauty that 
are beyond compare. 

3. Jesus remains the same in His attitude toward 
children. I have left this to the last because it is 
the most important. Do you remember what Jesus’ 
attitude was? He was surrounded by captious 
questioners one day who were attempting to prove 
that He was a revolutionary man. He saw a little 
child. He forgot the curs that were barking at His 
heels for destruction, saw the beauty in the face of 
the little child, and I think He must have placed 
His hand upon the little head, for He was a great 


154 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


teacher and He would know that when you place 
your hand upon the head of a child, your fingers 
touch the hearts of the parents. ‘ Forbid them 
not to come unto Me,” said Jesus, “ for of such is 
the kingdom of heaven.” 

Let us get the whole suggestion here. Some of 
us have been under the influence of a heresy, one 
of the worst heresies that has ever attacked the 
Christian Church. We have thought that a child | 
had to be converted. Notice what Jesus says. He 
says: “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” 
What does He mean? Just precisely what He says. 
Children are Christians, children do not need to be 
converted unless we allow them to go astray. This 
is a big challenge to the home and to the church. 
It is the business of parents and of churches to 
keep children so near Jesus through Christian nur- 
ture and example that they will never become lost. 

Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes has told a story 
which illustrated the value of childhood. A family 
living somewhere in the Middle West had but one 
child. He was about at the age of maturity when 
he came to his father one day and said, “ Dad, I 
would like to go to college. I have felt for some 
time that if I were trained I might become of some 
public service.” 

“John, we are poor,” his father replied, “ and 
the crops have been bad for two years. I do not 
know how we would arrange to meet the expense, 
but I will go in and talk it over with mother.” 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 155 


Fle was gone but a few moments when he came 
out and called John. If you want to discover severe 
economy, appeal to a mother in the interest of her 
-son. Mother had decided that John could go to 
college. ? 

After the old gentleman had uttered his homely 
words of advice, and the crooked fingers of the old 
mother, made crooked in long and loving service 
for her son, had gathered together her loving gifts, 
John went off across country to college. He 
worked almost night and day for three years and a 
half, and then wrote back to his parents to come 
down to college, that he would be graduated but 
once, that they must come. The old folks wrote to 
John saying, “ We have never been among college 
people. We haven't the right kind of clothes. We 
would disgrace you, John. Furthermore, we 
couldn’t get any one to do the chores.” 

John wrote again and said, “ Dad, you must 
come,’ and when a boy tells his Dad that he must 
‘do something, usually something happens; so the 
old gentleman hitched up the old gray horse to the 
carriage and drove down to the college town. John 
saw them coming, ran down through the streets 
and threw his arms about the shoulders of his 

father and mother as though they were a prince 
and princess. He took them up and down the 
campus and introduced them to his colleagues and 
professors as though they were the most eminent 
people on earth. 


156 VISITATION EVANGELISM 


John had won the honours of his class. Class 
Day arrived. They had built a great platform out 
of doors and arranged seats for the Class Day pro- 
gram. It was John’s privilege to deliver the ora- 
tion. He placed two chairs down in front of the 
platform for his mother and father, and finally 
arose a beautiful testimony to a Christian home, a 
Christian church and a Christian college. Again 
and again he was interrupted by applause. The old 
gentleman was finding it difficult to hide his pride. 
His old hand was gripping the arm of the chair 
with all the strength that he had left. Just before 
the conclusion of the oration John was interrupted 
again, but before he could continue, the old gentle- 
man arose, placed his hand upon his wife’s shoulder 
and said, “ Mary, that is the best crop we ever 
raised.” ‘The best crop that any institution can 
raise upon the face of the earth is a generation of 
boys and girls who have been kept close to the face, 
the heart, and the program of Jesus. 

This is Jesus’ richest field of evangelism, for 
evangelism has to do not only with the saving of 
those who are lost, but with the saving of those who 
are saved; and there never was a time in the history 
of the world when it was quite so necessary to give 
attention to this kind of a product. The world 
needs a generation of boys and girls now who more 
nearly approximate Jesus’ ideal of world citizenship 
than ever before. America stands in a place of 
great opportunity to supply this need, but she will 


THE CHANGELESS CHRIST 157 


fail to meet it unless her boys and girls are kept 
closer to Christ than any other generation in the 
history of the human race. 

May we emulate Jesus here, and all be evangel- 
ists who will place the most emphasis upon the 
conservation of the fragrant beauties and potential 
passions of childhood. This is the message of the 
Changeless Christ to those who would succeed in 
evangelism. 


THE END 





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